Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (9 page)

With the manuscript under at least a cursory review, Cole responded to Marsh's letter. She broke the news that there was no time for formal editing but assured Marsh they were going back to reassess the pages. She encouraged him to send along corrections on the carbons and to forward guidelines on punctuation and dialect that could be used by the typesetters. As for Mitchell's refusal to participate in the book's release, Cole expressed surprise and disappointment. Enthusiastic about the project, Cole had taken for granted that Mitchell, as a first-time author, would want to enjoy the fun of her success. The editor agreed, however, not to force the issue, given Mitchell's health. Cole was astonished that the previous months had been so taxing and assured Marsh that, if Macmillan had known what Mitchell was going through, the release could easily have been put off a year. It would not have been the end of the world.
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With Marsh's concerns addressed, it was now Cole's turn to raise some issues on behalf of Macmillan. With all the pages of the manuscript finally together in one place, the company had come to the startling realization that the novel contained more than four hundred thousand words, which meant about one thousand pages of printed text.
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In July 1935, when Latham had only a disjointed pile of papers to go by, he had estimated the book would be about one hundred and fifty thousand words.
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The Macmillan editorial staff had predicted it would be closer to two hundred and fifty thousand or three hundred thousand words and, based on that estimate, had announced a retail price of $2.50.
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The firm now realized it had grossly underestimated the size and, thus, expense of publishing
Gone With the
Wind
. To earn a profit on such a lengthy book, Macmillan would have to raise the price or cut its costs. The publisher decided to do both.

Depending on how well the book sold, a suggested retail price of $2.75 or $3.00—both of which were at the top end of the market for fiction—would be needed for the firm to break even. Yet, the Macmillan sales team was worried that a high price tag would scare away readers. With the nation in the throes of the Great Depression, disposable income was scarce. Only one other publisher in recent memory was known to have asked readers to part with $3.00 for a novel—Farrar & Rinehart for
Anthony Adverse
, an epic historical saga of 1,244 pages published in 1933. Cost had not hampered that book's success; it had gone on to be a mega bestseller. Was
Gone With
the Wind
good enough to carry the same price as
Anthony Adverse
? The team approached George Brett with the dilemma. According to Macmillan lore, Brett heard what the sales and marketing people had to say and then leaned back in his chair and asked if Mitchell's book could possibly be as good as everyone said. When they assured him of its merits, he told them to go with $3.00. If it was that good, people would want it, he said.
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It was a bold decision, of which Brett was proud the rest of his life.
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To further protect its bottom line, Macmillan also decided that Mitchell should accept a reduced royalty. According to the contract, Macmillan owed her 10 percent of the suggested retail price on the first ten thousand copies of the book sold, and 15 percent on any copies beyond that. The firm now wanted her to accept a 10 percent royalty on all copies of the book, with no increased percentage for higher sales. Latham was in Europe, which left Cole to break the news to Mitchell. The associate editor did her best to soften the blow. Cole explained that, if Mitchell did not agree to the revised royalties, the publisher would have to cheapen the book's format by using a smaller font and scale back on advertising. On the bright side, with the book priced at $3.00, the total royalty payment on the first ten thousand copies would be $500 higher than if the book sold for $2.50 under the original royalty rate. For additional copies, Mitchell would receive less than she had been entitled to under the original agreement, but Cole predicted the loss would be minimal, given the increased sales associated with an attractive volume. Laying it on thick, Cole promised her friend that Macmillan planned a splendid-looking book to match its splendid content. Lest Mitchell have any hesitation, Cole appealed to the author's vanity, noting that they would not want
Gone With the Wind
to go out into the world looking other than its best.
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The Marshes were not pleased. Macmillan had known from the beginning that the finished product would be long and had never hinted this would pose a problem. Moreover, the final manuscript was shorter than the original one given to Latham. If she had known length was an issue, Mitchell felt she should have been allowed to make additional cuts. Mitchell and Marsh also worried that pricing the book at $3.00 would kill its chance of success.
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And perhaps most irritating, Marsh suspected Macmillan forced Cole to ask for the concession, knowing it would be difficult for Mitchell to say no to her friend.
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Despite these reservations, Mitchell accepted the reduced royalty. The author consoled herself that the book would not sell enough copies for the royalty terms to make much difference. Although claiming Mitchell's “Scotch ancestors must be turning over in their graves,” Marsh told Cole that Mitchell wanted the book to do well and hated the idea of it being published in a substandard format. However, she could not accept Macmillan's casual attitude toward copyediting. If the company failed to edit the manuscript prior to production, she thought the publisher ought to assume the cost of correcting errors. The couple also declined to send a list of stylistic rules. Mitchell did not have such a list and did not think an understandable one could be created. She would be glad to answer any questions Macmillan had and would catch what mistakes she could down the line.

With those issues settled and the manuscript in the hands of the production department, Cole turned her attention to the book's release, now three months away. Few people at Macmillan had seen the entire novel, but many, including Brett, were eager to do so.
¹⁶
Cole especially wanted the salesmen responsible for promoting
Gone With the Wind
to get a chance to read it before the release date. These “travelers,” as they were called, played a key role in disseminating important industry news and gossip to remote locations around the country. Wanting to keep the troops enthused, Cole asked Mitchell to send along any extra copies of the chapters that she might have for Macmillan to pass around.

As it turns out, Cole had nothing to worry about. Excitement remained high among the Macmillan ranks. Convinced that
Gone With the
Wind
was a winner, the travelers had been spreading the word since the year-end sales conference. Having only a skeletal understanding of the plot, they took the commonsense approach of focusing on the universally appealing tale of how a big-city editor discovered a spirited Southern female reporter-turned-housewife who spent a decade toiling in obscurity to write an epic American novel. (Absent from the cast of characters was Cole as the fairy godmother.) The stirring account caught on like wildfire. As a columnist in the
Atlanta Constitution
would note a year later when describing the book's fantastic success, “The story of Miss Mitchell's strike is almost as fascinating as the story she wrote between the boards.”
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Some of Macmillan's salespeople got so carried away that they dramatized the story almost beyond recognition. Marsh's sister, Frances Zane, worked in a Wilmington, Delaware, bookstore at the time and relayed to the couple the story of a Macmillan salesman who told her the manuscript had been presented to Latham in a wooden box by a Mitchell family servant. When Mitchell reported the exaggeration to a Macmillan representative in Atlanta, the man expressed regret that he had not thought of it himself.
¹⁸

In the middle of February 1936, a letter arrived at Macmillan headquarters offering unmistakable proof that interest was building. Samuel Goldwyn, Inc., a major Hollywood production firm, wanted information on
Gone With the Wind
, the new book by “Mary Mitchell.”
¹⁹
Not bad for a book by an unknown author that only a handful of people had read.

In Atlanta, Mitchell waited for the galleys to arrive from Macmillan and continued to fret over the manuscript. One issue in particular that caused her to worry was whether she had identified the appropriate planting season for pre–boll weevil cotton. Unable to put her mind at rest over the detail, she wrote to the agriculturist who had helped months earlier on the buckwheat question to see if he could offer any assistance. Mitchell conceded that nobody outside of Georgia would know if she got it wrong, “but I would know and would probably wake up screaming in the night about it.”
²⁰
He assured her she had the correct date.

On February 12, a mere two weeks after the final chapters had been sent to New York, the Marshes received the initial set of galleys. Printed on long sheets of paper with several pages of text per sheet, the galleys are an author's first glimpse at what the finished book will look like.
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Seeing them tends to be a difficult experience, especially for a novice like Mitchell. Cole summed up the experience: “There is a certain amount of excitement, as well as anguish, in seeing your brain child in cold type.”
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Some authors barely recognize their own work in this new form. The words often take on a new relationship with each other, and a new rhythm may appear. Defects can pop out that had been hiding in the text, or in happy circumstances, the work appears in a new—and brighter—light.

The evening the
Gone With the Wind
galleys arrived, the Marshes stayed up most of the night reading the pages and taking notes. They thought Prink, Macmillan's copy editor, had done a “sympathetic and understanding job” in tidying up the manuscript. She had ironed out irregularities in punctuation and grammar and caught a few contradictory statements that might have been embarrassing. That said, Mitchell and Marsh had an extensive list of concerns they wanted addressed before they could finish proofreading the document. The following morning, Marsh stayed home from work and compiled nine pages of comments, which he sent to Cole that afternoon by airmail. Of chief concern were adjustments Prink had made to the dialect and punctuation, such as removing quotation marks Mitchell had put around Scarlett's thoughts. Mitchell thought the marks helped “brighten up” the page and let the reader “hear” what was going through Scarlett's mind. The author also had strong feelings about exclamation points, preferring to use them on rare occasions, and colons, which she never used. As for semicolons, she was “definitely Anti,” preferring a comma, or a period and starting a new sentence. Marsh did not want the firm to think Mitchell was being picky: “I know your editor thinks by this time that Peggy is finding fault with everything. She isn't really, only with things which are important . . . to her.” Until she heard back, she would delay making further corrections. Marsh closed the letter with the wish that “may we all live through this tough experience—and then have more sense than to write any more books.”
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If the Marshes were troubled by the liberties Macmillan had taken with the manuscript, imagine their reaction when they learned, a few days later, that the galleys had gone into production without waiting for the author's comments.
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There had been a storm on the East Coast that week, and the plane carrying Marsh's letter had been grounded. Given the time crunch, and not realizing the extent of their concerns, Macmillan had gone ahead and revised the galleys based on its own edits. By the time Cole received Marsh's letter, almost all of the type had been set.

She had no choice but to call the production department and stop the presses. She responded to Marsh by special delivery letter, apologizing and agreeing that Macmillan would cover the costs of revising the type in accordance with their concerns.
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But Macmillan would bend only so far. In the company's defense, Cole pointed out, Marsh's earlier letter had made it sound like he wanted Macmillan to take the lead on editing. The Marshes had declined to send a style guide, and thus Prink had done what she thought appropriate. Going forward, Cole stipulated, any other changes Mitchell wanted would be charged to the author. Cole wrote again a few days later, cautioning Mitchell that, given the length of the book, she should not go overboard. The minutest edit—even adding or deleting a single comma—could throw off a printed line, and it cost nineteen cents per line change. In her experience, Cole said, authors tended to begin by making a slew of revisions and then would stop, horrified, and give up. She understood how unpleasant proofing could be and hoped it had not become “too much of a bore.”
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One thing the Marshes were not was bored. On February 25, 1936, Mitchell wrote her mother-in-law that the couple was reviewing the galleys every day until two or three o'clock in the morning. It seemed a nightmare.
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They were exhausted and overwhelmed, but certainly not bored—nor would they be for months, or years, to come.