September 18 Sunday – Alfred P. Burbank wrote to Sam. Trial performances of Colonel Sellers as a Scientist to small audiences in Rochester and Syracuse had received poor reviews from newspapers there. Still, Burbank was optimistic. He invited Sam to attend a Sept. 23 performance at the Lyceum Theater in New York, “promising elaborate arrangements to keep his attendance secret” [MTNJ 3: 300n1]. Sam sent Franklin G. Whitmore instead. New York critics were not kind and further efforts to stage the play were dropped.
New York Times, Sept 18, 1887, p 2 “Notes of the Week”:
“The American Claimant,” a comic piece, by William Dean Howells and Samuel R. Clemens will be presented at the Lyceum Theatre next Friday afternoon. This play deals with the career of Colonel Mulberry Sellers 10 years after the incidents of “The Gilded Age.” It was announced for production at the Lyceum a year ago last Spring, and the announcement was afterward made that the authors withdrew the play because they were not satisfied with it. It was tried at New-Brunswick, N.J last week. Mr. A.P. Burbank, widely known as a reader and platform humorist, will undertake to act the part of Colonel Sellers. [Note: the Brooklyn Eagle also announced “The New ‘Colonel Sellers’ by Mark Twain” on page 6, “Theaters and Music.”]
Sam wrote a long, detailed letter to Charles Webster about book sales, subscription sales vs. trade sales totals and a “systematic & orderly scheme” he’d devised, which Webster could try “on the cook book.” Sam wanted the scheme to be private, not allowing any clerk to see it and not to “type-writer it. We don’t want to give away a good idea to other publishers.”
Sam’s system would guarantee no losses on any book, and involved stair-stepping royalty percentages based on the first, second, third 10,000 books sold, and beyond: from five per cent up to twelve percent. Plate costs would be recovered prior to royalties kicking in. Sam then provided several examples of trade sales for famous books, from Bret Harte’s The Luck of Roaring Camp, to Aldrich’s The Story of a Bad Boy, to Howells’ A Foregone Conclusion; showing in each case the numbers of books sold in the trade and the resultant royalties earned, then comparing them with sales that could have been made by subscription and royalties thus earned. Sam then wrote about the Library of Humor:
When I first projected the Library of Humor, I placed the sale at my usual figure for a $3.50 book — 60,000 copies in 6 months. I have raised on that, now — to 80,000. That is my bottom estimate. Clark says it is a magnificent book, & nobody can glance into it without buying it, even if he has to sell his shirt. Therefore the canvass must be extended [MTLTP 232-5].
Sam thought the canvass should begin Jan. 1, 1888 and end Mar. 15. On his next trip to New York he wanted to “definitely arrange dates for the succeeding books as well as we possibly can for their advantage.” Note: Sam was now taking over many of the details from the “jackass” Webster. Seldom had he written such a detailed letter to Webster.