Publishers’ Interests in Western Writing

ALVIN M. JOSEPH Y, JR. Publishers’ Interests in Western Writing In the course of its history, the American West, as a hero, has been beset and frustrated by many Eastern villains. We recall the railroads, the banks, and the insurance companies —the trusts and other monied octopi, all east of the Missouri River, that short­ changed, bedevilled, and foreclosed upon the Western pioneer and producer. More recently, we became familiar with their lineal descendants — the so-called Eastern Establishment, centered in New York and Pennsylvania, and the Federal bureaucracy in Wash­ ington, D.C., conspiring between themselves —as some see it —to infringe upon and limit the freedoms of Western States and their citizens. In like vein, I am acutely aware that today the American Publisher, seemingly an Eastern- and European-oriented monopo­ list, is also considered something of an enemy of the West —not so much, perhaps, because of overt hostility and sins of commis­ sion, but because of what appears to many persons to be a cold shoulder he gives to the West, to Western themes, and to Western writers. Many Western authors who have cracked the Eastern ram­ parts and have published successfully and happily may have no cause for complaint. But, quite frankly, I have had enough ex­ perience at American Heritage in New York, and have engaged in enough sober discussions during my travels in the West and at my home in the Northwest to know that not enough common ground, understanding, and atmosphere of partnership yet exists between the Publisher on the Atlantic Coast and the creative writer west of the Missouri. Editor’s Note: A paper presented at the 18th Annual University of Utah Writers’ Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah, June 1966. Publishers’ Interests 261 Certain types of publishing, to be sure, provide few problems to the professional writer in the West. By adhering to the standards and demands of well-defined fictional markets, the traditional type Western story, woven according to formula, can usually find a publisher. Many members of the Western Writers of America, for instance, make steady sales, often with very good returns, in the hard and soft cover markets —and, quite often, because, like good artists, they are well grounded in the fundamentals of their pro­ fession, they defy the rules and produce works of exciting origin­ ality and distinction. Fictional works of whatever degree of originality —so long as they trace back essentially to the framework laid down by such books as The Virginian —seem to enjoy, as a matter of fact, increas­ ing receptivity among publishers, both in the East and the West. Anyone who attends a gathering of professional authors in the West must be aware these days of the number of competing editors and publishers’ representatives who show up —not simply to advertise and sell the latest lists, but to search out, meet, and sign up writers. The publishers’ advertisements in the convention programs serve to confirm this expanding interest. More books are being bought by readers of every taste and interest, and the publishers must have more books, including Westerns, to sell. As with traditional type fiction, so with traditional type non­ fiction. Many presses, both university and non-university, are fol­ lowing with zeal the path charted by the University of Oklahoma Press among others. It will no longer suffice to publish a half dozen works a year. It has become something like the moving picture industry which must keep the theaters filled. The book racks must remain filled with new titles. So there is great com­ petition for manuscripts on the West, and authors are now finding Eastern university presses like Yale, and Eastern trade publishers like Hastings House and Doubleday, Lippincott and McGraw-Hill, eager to read what they have written. Up to now, I have somewhat arbitrarily been using the term “traditional” in referring to the kind of works, both fictional and non-fictional, that are finding expanding markets and that do not seem —for one reason or another — to come bouncing back with rejection slips from Eastern publishers. 262 Western American Literature The question now arises, what of the many publishers who do not have continuing lists —fictional or...