The bookseller supplies
the public, the publisher supplies the bookseller, the author
supplies the publisher. A bookseller has in his window what the
people want, and the publisher furnishes material in response to the
same desire; just as a farmer plants in his fields some foodstuffs
for which there is a sharp demand. Authors are compelled to write
for the market, whether they like it or not, otherwise their work
can not appear in print. The reason why the modern novel, with all
its shortcomings, is the mirror of ideas on every conceivable topic
in religious, educational, economic, and sociological thought, is
because the vast majority of writers are at this moment compelled by
the market to put their reflections into the form of novels, just as
Marlowe and Chapman were forced to write plays. With one exception,
the law of supply and demand determines the metrical shape of the
poet's frenzy, and the prose mould of the philosopher's ideas.
The exception is so rare that it establishes the rule.
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