Copy of Mr. Clemens’s speech at booksellers’ banquet in regard to sales of his books during last fourⒶtextual note years—Statement as to amount of royalties in last fourⒶtextual note years.
I clipⒶtextual note the following from the newspapersⒺexplanatory note:
In a speech delivered at the eighth annual banquet of the American Booksellers’ Association Mark Twain quoted some remarkable statistics that show the popularity of his writings. Included in the association are practically all the booksellers of America. The banquet was held at the rooms of the Aldine Association, No. 111 Fifth Avenue, Wednesday evening, May 20. Among other things Mark Twain said:
“This annual gathering of booksellers from all over America comes together ostensibly to eat and drink, but really to discuss business; therefore I am required to talk shop. I am required to furnish a statement of the indebtedness under which I lie to you gentlemen for your help in enabling me to earn my living. For something over forty years I have acquired my bread by print, beginning with Innocents Abroad, followed at intervals of a year or so by Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, Gilded Age, and so on. For thirty-six years my books were sold by subscription. You are not interested in those years, but only in the four which have since followed. The books passed into the hands of my present publishers at the beginning of 1904, and you then became the providers of my diet. I think I may say, without flattering you, that you have done exceedingly well by me. Exceedingly well is not too strong a phrase, since the official statistics show that in four years you have sold twice as many volumes of my venerable books as my contract with my publishers bound you and them to sell in five years. To your sorrow you are aware that frequently, much too frequently, when a book gets to be five or ten years old its annual sale shrinks to two or three hundred copies, and after an added ten or twenty years ceases to sell. But you sell thousands of my moss-backed old books every year—the youngest of them being books that range from fifteen to twenty-seven years old, and the oldest reaching back to thirty-five and forty.
By the terms of my contract my publishers had to account to me for 50,000 volumes per year for five years, and pay me for them whether they sold them or notⒺexplanatory note. It is at this point that you gentlemen come in, for it was your business to unload the 250,000 volumes upon the public in five years if you possibly could. Have you succeeded? Yes, you have—and more. For in four years, with a year still to spare, you have sold the 250,000 volumes, and 240,000 besides.
Your sales have increased each year. In the first year you sold 90,328; in the second year, 104,851; in the third, 133,975; in the fourth year—which was last year—you sold 160,000. The aggregate for the four years is 500,000 volumes, lacking 11,000.
Of the oldest book, the Innocents Abroad—now forty years old—you sold upwards of 46,000 copies in the four years; of Roughing It—now thirty-eight years old, I think—you sold 40,334; of Tom Sawyer, 41,000. And so on.
And there is one thing that is peculiarly gratifying to me: the Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc is a serious book; I wrote it for love, and never expected it to sell, but you have pleasantly disappointed me in that matter. In your hands its [begin page 237] sale has increased each year. In 1904 you sold 1726 copies; in 1905, 2445; in 1906, 5381; and last year, 6574.”
There were three hundred and fifty booksellers present, and they came from all parts of the United States. They wanted statistics, and I furnished them from Harper and Brothers’ official statements. It was not necessary to tell how much my book-royalties had paid me in the four years and I did not do it; but I may say here that my income from the books was almost twice as much in the fourth year as it was in the first. The first year it was twenty-five thousand dollars, and last year it was some trifle over forty-eight thousand.
I clip the following from the newspapers] The source of the clipping transcribed here has not been identified.
Source document.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 2527–29, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS1, as revised by Clemens, is the only authoritative source for this dictation. Clemens’s speech (236.5–237.2) was printed in numerous newspapers and periodicals, but Hobby’s exact source has not been identified.