Every once in a while a worker yields to the urge to publish a book on his own. It may be a collection of his favorite evangelistic sermons, or perhaps a single topic on which no standard tract is available, or a theme for which he has a special burden. It may even be some specific field of study given in the classroom and acclaimed by the students. People have praised his sermons and have expressed a wish for copies of various addresses. So he has yielded to this persuasive pressure, and has had them published as a commercial job by a local printer, at a stipulated price. It was, therefore, produced without safeguard to the writer or protection to the denomination or the public.
No matter how affable and obliging the local printer may be—and he may have fair equipment—he is not equipped in personnel and experience to print books as a regular book publisher. He does not have the requisite organization and staff. He has no battery of copy editors, checkers, counselors, and proofreaders. He has not developed an acceptable standard of style, involving consistent punctuation, correct -spelling, and a hundred niceties that go into typographical excellence. He has no established reputation as a publisher. His publisher's card, if it appears, carries no weight. In fact, he is not a publisher at all but only a printer, with all the limitations which that implies.
A printer is not responsible for the good name of a book. He is not concerned over the protection of the author, to whose shoulders he shifts the sole responsibility for the book—its thoughts and its excellencies, as well as its errors and the matter of its survival. His is sheerly a commercial job for a price.
Reputable publishers, on the contrary, assume a joint responsibility with the author. Their own good name is involved when they publish a manuscript. They will see that quotations are verified, and obvious facts, names, places, dates, and so forth properly checked. Correct grammatical and rhetorical rules are applied; spelling and punctuation are watched; and the book is given acceptable form.
Put even at that, the standard publishing house of the land goes only so far. The responsibility for the teaching in the book, the soundness of its thesis, the acceptability of the authorities and sources quoted, and their fair use are placed squarely on the shoulders of the author. That is not the concern of the publishers of the world. They do not know our faith, and are not concerned about it. They publish books which set forth diametrically opposite views—evolutionist and creationist, modernist and fundamentalist, and a multiple variety of viewpoints and contentions. That is their purpose—to publish what reputable writers and scholars have to say, and publish it competently.
Seventh-day Adventist authors, in our standard productions, are not seeking to air their various private interpretations. They are seeking to convey our commissioned message to mankind. They surrender individualism and become representative spokesmen for a unified movement. They are heralds of a message on which we all stand together. Seventh-day Adventist publishing houses, built by denominational investment, were instituted not to publish whatever a worker may elect, but to produce the finest literature possible to give our basic message the widest consistent circulation in the most representative fashion.
Our houses are vastly more than printers. They are publishers in the fullest sense. They foster sales and give publicity through our established channels. They are partners in a threefold compact—they serve and protect the denomination itself, the denominational publisher, and the denominational author. They have both a denominational name to safeguard, and a publisher's name and reputation to protect. They, therefore, have book committees to read, evaluate, and recommend specific action and improvements on manuscripts. They have boards to make final decision, skilled staffs to check, edit, and correct the copy, and put it into acceptable form.
They have a talented art department to design the format and style, and to prepare the illustrations. They have competent linotype operators, compositors, make-up men, and proofreaders, as well as trained pressmen and bindery workers, to carry the work through to a successful conclusion. When the finished product carries the stamp of a standard publishing house, it bears denominational approval. It is then a denominational, not a private, publication. It has a measure of authority and dignity not otherwise possible.
When people see a publication without a proper title page, without an authoritative publisher's card, without the legally required "Printed in the U.S.A." (for American publishers), crude in form, and inaccurate in content, they know it is a "private publication," a maverick on the range of literature in the rough. They assume it could not pass the test of a standard publishing house scrutiny, and the authors, therefore, must have been forced to find some other way.
For your own sake, brother worker, for the sake of the good name of this cause, which you have espoused and now represent, for the sake of the church that issues you credentials and whose monthly support you accept—as well as for the sake of the public that has a right to literature that is representative—eschew private printing ventures. Put your literary products through the established channels. This is quite apart from the financial headache often involved, and the questionable ethics of a man's promoting and privately selling his own product.
So, if your writings do not have sufficient merit to pass the protective safeguards of a publisher, better forget them, or earnestly work them over. Many authors have to do that. If they have merit, be sure that it will be recognized, and they will be disbursed more effectively than you could carry through on your own. Our publishers and our movement want ever better and increasingly effective publications to give to the world and to our own people. Play fair with the movement: You will be stronger for the process. Your book or tract will be the better therefor, and you will be pulling in teamwork as a partner in this great movement. Shun private printing ventures.
L. E. F.
