Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women

8. Fresh Starts and Farewells: 1925-30

8 Fresh Starts and Farewells: 1925–30 Oh Dolly, the rooms are haunted. There are our spirits there. . . . Perhaps the strangest impression, of which I was not conscious at first, is that of going back after all these years—going back alone. I mean, and changed as I am. —Zane Grey, Letter from Lackawaxen, late May, 1929 In its February 21, 1925, issue, Publishers Weekly ran an article about the one hundred best-selling authors from 1900 through 1924 and ranked Zane Grey number six. The five authors above him—Winston Churchill, Harold Bell Wright, Booth Tarkington, George Barr McCutcheon, and Mary Roberts Rinehart—started writing best sellers before 1910.1 Since Grey did not make the annual list until 1915, he was more recent and would have been higher had the starting date been later. A follow-up article in 1927 entitled “The Most Popular Authors of Fiction in the Post-War Period, 1919–1926” ranked Grey first and the odds-on favorite to be the best-selling author of the decade .2 However, there were telltale signs of trouble ahead. The February 21, 08.254-280_Paul.indd 254 8/10/05 1:52:08 PM Fresh Starts and Farewells 255 1925, issue of Publishers Weekly that carried its first article on best sellers announced the arrival of The Thundering Herd on its monthly list.3 Although Herd remained on the list for three more months, it did not do well enough to make the annual list.4 The Vanishing American was on the monthly list for two months during 1926, and also did not achieve the annual list.5 The Call of the Canyon, which won third place for 1924, marked the last appearance of a Grey novel on the annual list. Grey’s 1925 absence from the list on which he had been a regular for nine of the past ten years was both significant and misleading. It is quite possible that the annual list for this year was flawed and underestimated the popularity of The Thundering Herd. That year, Publishers Weekly did not publish a list for April. Since its annual list was a weighted computation of the monthly listings, it is possible that Herd would have made the April list, and that the exclusion of this month skewed the annual computation against it. This possibility is upheld by Bookman’s “Monthly Scoreboard,” which showed Herd at various positions for six months from January through June.6 Grey’s financial records furnish additional support. His initial royalty payment for the novel—the distribution from the publisher and normally the largest— was $32,000. The Call of the Canyon achieved the annual list for 1924 with a significantly lower first royalty of $29,000.7 While the periods covered by these payments may have differed, Call may have also made the list only because its competition had weak sales too. Even today’s more reliable list is based on relative sales and therefore is subject to similar variables. Frank Gruber claimed that Herd and Vanishing American failed to make the annual best-seller list for 1925 because they were published the same year.8 Although this is true, Herd came out in January, and American was not released until December, long after Herd had dropped from the monthly listings . Each enjoyed almost a full year of sales unopposed, and Harpers was too experienced and too protective of Grey to pit his novels against each other in a ruinous competition. In fact, Herd was more of a threat to Call since it appeared the same month that Call dropped from the list, but the staff at Harpers carefully orchestrated these releases.9 In short, both The Thundering Herd and The Vanishing American did well enough to suggest that the sales of Grey’s novels were leveling off rather than declining. Meanwhile, his annual income continued to grow impressively. He earned $128,496 for 1921, $292,473 for 1924, and $323,948 for 1927.10 Fees from his serializations continued to spiral ever higher. Back in 1920, he was surprised and thrilled to receive $10,000 for a serialization. Two years later, Ladies’ Home Journal paid $20,000 for The Vanishing American and $30,000 for The 08.254-280_Paul.indd 255 8/10/05 1:52:08 PM zane grey 256 Thundering Herd. For Nevada, which ran in American Magazine over the fall of...