I have often been asked how I came to write.
The best answer is that I needed the money. When I started I was 35 and
had failed in every enterprise I had ever attempted.
I was born in Chicago. After epidemics had closed two
schools that I attended, my parents shipped me to a cattle ranch in Idaho
where I rode for my brothers who were only recently out of college and
had entered the cattle business as the best way of utilizing their Yale
degrees. Later, I was dropped from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts;
flunked examinations for West Point; and was discharged from the regular
army on account of a weak heart. Next, my brother Henry backed me in setting
up a stationery store in Pocatello, Idaho. That didn't last long either.
When I got married in 1900 I was making $15 a week in
my father's storage battery business. In 1903 my oldest brother, George,
gave me a position on a gold dredge he was operating in the Stanley Basin
country in Idaho. Our next stop was in Oregon, where my brother Henry was
managing a gold dredge on the Snake River. We arrived on a freight wagon,
with a collie dog and $40. Forty dollars did not seem like much to get
anywhere with, so I decided to enter a poker game at a local saloon and
run my capital up to several hundred dollars during the night. When I returned
at midnight to the room we had rented, we still had the collie dog. Otherwise,
we were not broke.
I worked in Oregon until the company failed, and then
my brother got me a job as a railroad policeman in Salt Lake City. We were
certainly poverty-stricken there, but pride kept us from asking for help.
Neither of us knew much about anything that was practical, but we had to
do everything ourselves, including the family wash. Not wishing to see
Mrs. Burroughs do work of that sort, I volunteered to do it myself. During
those months, I half soled my own shoes and did numerous odd jobs.
Then a brilliant idea overtook us. We had our household
furniture with us, and we held an auction which was a howling success.
People paid real money for the junk and we went back to Chicago first class.
The next few months encompassed a series of horrible jobs. I sold electric
light bulbs to janitors, candy to drug stores, and Stoddard's Lectures
from door to door. I had decided I was a total failure, when I saw an advertisement
which indicated that somebody wanted an expert accountant. Not knowing
anything about its I applied for the job and got it.
I am convinced that what are commonly known as "the breaks,"
good or bad, have fully as much to do with one's success or failure as
ability. The break I got in this instance lay in the fact that my employer
knew even less about the duties of an expert accountant than I did.
Next I determined there was a great future in the mail-order
business, and I landed a job that brought me to the head of a large department.
About this time our daughter Joan was born. Having a good job and every
prospect for advancement, I decided to go into business for myself, with
harrowing results. I had no capital when I started and less when I got
through. At this time the mail-order company offered me an excellent position
if I wanted to come back. If I had accepted it, I would probably have been
fixed for life with a good living salary. Yet the chances are that I would
never have written a story, which proves that occasionally it is better
to do the wrong thing than the right.
When my independent business sank without a trace, I approached
as near financial nadir as one may reach. My son, Hulbert, had just been
born. I had no job, and no money. I had to pawn Mrs, Burroughs' jewelry
and my watch in order to buy food. I loathed poverty, and I should have
liked to have put my hands on the man who said that poverty is an honorable
estate. It is an indication of inefficiency and nothing more. There is
nothing honorable or fine about it. To be poor is quite bad enough. But
to be poor without hope . . . well, the only way to understand it is to
be it.
I got writer's cramp answering blind ads, and wore out
my shoes chasing after others. At last l got placed as an agent for a lead
pencil sharpener. I borrowed office space, and while subagents were out,
trying unsuccessfully to sell the sharpener, I started to write my first
story.
I had good reason for thinking I could sell what I wrote.
I had gone thoroughly through some of the all-fiction magazines and I made
up my mind that if people were paid for writing such rot as I read I could
write stories just as rotten. Although I had never written a story, I knew
absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably
a lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines.
I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and
now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique,
although with the publication of my new novel, "Tarzan and the Lost Empire",
there are 31 books on my list. I had never met an editor, or an author
or a publisher. I had no idea of how to submit a story or what I could
expect in payment. Had I known anything about it at all I would never have
thought of submitting half a novel; but that is what I did.
Thomas Newell Metcalf, who was then editor of The All-Story
magazine, published by Munsey, wrote me that he liked the first half of
a story I had sent him, and if the second half was as good he thought he
might use it. Had he not given me this encouragement, I would never have
finished the story, and my writing career would have been at an end, since
l was not writing because of any urge to write, nor for any particular
love of writing. l was writing because I had a wife and two babies, a combination
which does not work well without money.
I finished the second half of the story, and got $400
for the manuscript, which at that time included all serial rights. The
check was the first big event in my life. No amount of money today could
possibly give me the thrill that first $400 check gave me.
My first story was entitled, "Dejah Thoris, Princess of
Mars." Metcalf changed it to "Under the Moons of Mars." It was later published
in book form as "A Princess of Mars."
With the success of my first story, l decided to make
writing a career, though I was canny enough not to give up my job. But
the job did not pay expenses and we had a recurrence of great poverty,
sustained only by the thread of hope that I might make a living writing
fiction. I cast about for a better job and landed one as a department manager
for a business magazine. While I was working there, I wrote "Tarzan of
the Apes", evenings and holidays. I wrote it in longhand on the backs of
old letterheads and odd pieces of paper. I did not think it was a very
good story and I doubted if it would sell. But Bob Davis saw its possibilities
for magazine publication and I got a check . . . this time, l think, for
$700.
I then wrote "The Gods of Mars", which I sold immediately
to the Munsey Company for All-Story. "The Return of Tarzan", which I wrote
in December, 1912, and January, 1913, was rejected by Metcalf and purchased
by Street & Smith for $1,000 in February, 1913. That same month John
Coleman, our third child, was born, and I now decided to devote myself
to writing.
We were a long way from home. My income depended solely
upon the sale of magazine rights. I had not had a book published at that
time, and therefore no book royalties were coming in. Had I failed to sell
a single story during those months, we would have been broke again. But
I sold them all.
That I had to work is evidenced by a graph that I keep
on my desk showing my word output from year to year since 1911. In 1913,
it reached its peak, with 413,000 words for the year. I had been trying
to find a publisher who would put some of my stuff into book form, but
I met with no encouragement. Every well-known publisher in the United States
turned down "Tarzan of the Apes", including A.C. McClurg & Co., who
finally issued it, my first story in book form.
It's popularity and its final appearance as a book was
due to the vision of J. H. Tennant, editor of the New York Evening World.
He saw its possibilities as a newspaper serial and ran it in the Evening
World, and the result was that other papers followed suit. This made the
story widely known, and resulted in a demand from readers for the story
in book form, which was so insistent that A.C. McClurg & Co. finally
came to me after they rejected it and asked to be allowed to publish it.
And that's how I became a writer!
When I started writing, a little more than twenty
years ago, my literary experience had not progressed much beyond the harness
section of Sears-Roebuck's catalogue; and I did not know the name of the
editor of that. I doubt that I knew the name of any editor, and I certainly
was not acquainted with one personally; to the best of my knowledge I did
not even know a single writer. I thought authors were long-haired nuts
with Windsor ties and halitosis, and editors grouchy old gentlemen with
fuzzy white beards and spectacles. That was before I had met such men as
Don Kennicott, Edwin Balmer, Ray Long, and Bob Davis.
As to writers, I do not know much about them even yet;
but judging by the lengths some of them go to obtain publicity I feel that
I was not far wrong in my original estimate of their mentality, and a lot
of them look as though they had halitosis.
But what I knew about writers and editors was encyclopedic
compared with what I knew about any phase of the profession of literature.
Doubtless there are reviewers who will opine that I have not greatly increased
my knowledge in the ensuing twenty years -- but it is not of the technique
of writing that we are concerned at the moment; it is with a certain aspect
of the practical rather than the artistic side of writing that I wish to
deal.
Among the innumerable things of which I was ignorant were
the various rights inherent in literary productions. Vaguely, in a hazy,
muddy sort of way, I realized that magazines and books were different;
and so, when I sent out my first manuscript, I insisted upon retaining
the book rights. Not knowing about any of the other rights, I generously
passed them all over to the magazine. Of course there may be some question
as to the degree of my generosity inasmuch as I did not know that I was
passing over anything and since, at the time, they were quite valueless.
I had sold a number of stories before I awoke to the fact
that I had been parting with something that might, some day be valuable;
and thereafter I offered fix serial rights only, a description which has
since talk the form of first American and Canadian magazine rights only.
This latter is one which I advise all writer to adopt, since it precludes
the possibility of later misunderstandings in relation to second magazine
rights and definitely retains for the writer his newspaper rights.
In connection with the rights which I gave away there
later occurred one of those things which could have happened in a few lines
of business and which constitute, with numerous other pleasant incidents,
the basis of my belief that writing is as altogether as satisfactory a
means of livelihood as one may find. Long after these rights became valuable
the magazines that had acquired them through my ignorance reassigned them
to me without question and without payment; and in addition to this every
magazine that has ever copyrighted one of my stories in its name has given
me a proper legal assignment of such copyright.
Of late years I have been fortunate in having been able
to arrange for the copyrighting of magazine stories in my own name or that
of my corporation; but to those who are unable to make such an arrangement
with the magazines for which they write, I suggest that they insist that
immediately upon the completion of the copyright by the magazine it be
legally assigned to them.
I have found that there is no better aid in the protection
of an author's rights in his work than the recordation of the copyright
in his own name or, as in my case, the name of a corporation which he controls.
This is especially true in the protection of motion picture rights and
the marketing of them, as producers insist, for their own protection, upon
determining the ownership of the copyright, and often employ attorneys
to consult the records at Washington before they will enter into a contract
for the motion picture rights in a story.
Furthermore, there are some unscrupulous producers or
agents who are constantly checking copyright ownership at Washington in
the hope of buying up copyrights in valuable material the copyright to
which does not stand in the name of the author.
But owning the copyright does not necessarily give you
all the rights in your work if you have been careless in the transferring
of rights and licenses to others. I have already mentioned the necessity
of thinking of your newspaper and second magazine rights when you dispose
of your first magazine rights. Twenty years ago I thought I was getting
all there was out of it when sold all the serial rights in a story for
a quarter of a cent a word, but since then I have sold second magazine
rights in those same stories for many times what all the former rights
brought me then.
I have never taken my work very seriously and I am afraid
that I never shall, but I take the business end of it quite seriously.
It was only inexperience that drew me into my first errors. Of course I
have made a lot since, but I endeavor not to make the same one twice. however,
I am still constituted much as I was twenty years ago, when the idea of
actual cash dramatic rights existing in Tarzan of the Apes would
have given me nothing more serious than a laugh. Yet only a few years after
it was published I entered into a contract for its production in England,
where it ran with greater or less (mostly less) success in the provinces
for some time. It was not a hit, but it might have been, and it may some
day lie. What you are writing today may be a hit some time. It has certain
potential values which you should protect.
Equally remote were the possibilities of profiting from
foreign and translation rights. A kindly providence who looks after infants,
inebriates, and young authors, preserved my foreign and translation rights
to me. Afterward, my foreign royalties were, at one time, greater than
my United States royalties. It paid me well to own them. Therefore, never
underrate the value of any of your rights; laugh at them, if you will;
but hang on to them.
Since those simple days of twenty years ago, when I blithely
gave away a fortune in rights that I did not know existed, many changes
have taken place, bringing new rights with them. Today I am closing a radio
contract covering the dramatic presentation of my stories over the air.
What a far cry from second magazine rights. Within a year I have seen a
television clause inserted in one of my motion picture contracts; and today
I am watching my television rights with as great solicitude as I watch
any of the others, for long before my copyrights expire television rights
will be worth a fortune. Possibly not mine, but some one's -- perhaps yours.
I am going to hang onto mine, however; and at least I can get a smile out
of them now, if I never get anything else.
Perhaps in my radio contract I shall insist upon the reservation
to me of the interplanetary rights. Why not? Radio rights and sound and
dialogue rights would have seemed as preposterous twenty years ago; and
with my intimate knowledge of conditions on other worlds, I, of all men,
should anticipate the value of broadcasting Tarzan to the eager multitudes
that swarm our sister planets. In addition to which I am accorded another
smile in a world none too generous with smiles since Wall Street started
weeping down all our backs.
In some instances writers are now compelled to fight for
certain rights, particularly those who enter into motion picture contracts;
and this is wrong. Such things should be as much a matter of standard practice
as are the efforts of motion picture producers to falsify royalty accounts.
Perhaps, when the Authors' League gets the Vestal copyright
bill off its chest, as it may during the next fifty-six years, it will
have time to devote to other things; and then, let us hope, it may negotiate
the adoption of standard practices upon the part of all the various markets
wherein writers sell their wares. All rights should be clearly and definitely
defined so that there may be no misapprehension nor confusion concerning
their interpretation. For example, our term serial rights is too general
in its significance; the word serial should be abandoned and publication
substituted for it. Then we would have: First magazine publication rights,
second magazine publication rights, newspaper publication rights, book
publication rights; and everyone would know what the other fellow was talking
about.
It is something that we should give thought to, if for
no other reason than to impress upon our minds the fact that in entering
into agreements we should be quite certain that every reference to rights
mentioned in the agreement is based upon a clear understanding by all parties
of the definition of such rights, and that such a definition is embodied
in the contract.
In closing, I should like to leave another thought with
you. It is based upon a practice I have been trying to establish (not always
successfully) in relation to certain of my own rights; it might be called
the reversion of rights.
Owners lease houses, real estate, yachts, and other possessions
for definite periods of time, at the end which all rights in the property
revert to them. There are certain rights in literary productions that may
be leased, rather than sold outright, to the great advantage of the author;
and if the principle may be gradually established by the insistence of
authors in a position to insist and with the moral aid of the Authors'
League and others concerned with the welfare of writers, eventually will
be accepted by the buyers of these rights as a matter of common practice.
There are many reasons why such a plan may be advantageous
to authors without working any hardship on the original lessee. The latter
is interested primarily and almost wholly in immediate profits; he would
a not buy these rights on the prospects of profits to be derived ten years
later. Therefore, he is not paying for the profits that may be derived
subsequent to a reasonable earning life of the property and, consequently,
should not own them.
The principal advantages to the author are the possibly
remote contingency of increased value after a lapse of years and the ability
to take these rights off the market upon the termination of the lease.
This latter is especially important in the matter of motion picture and
radio rights, and will be in television rights when they develop.
Sales of motion picture rights are often embarrassed,
complicated, or stopped by the natural fear on the part of a potential
purchaser that the owner of the picture rights in another story by the
same author will reissue it for the purpose of reaping the benefits of
expensive exploitation of the later picture, at the same time competing
with the new picture in the exhibitor market. Doubtless, similar conditions
will arise in connection with radio and television rights.
Three years should be the limit of radio contracts, at
least until we have gained greater knowledge of this field through experience;
five to ten years should be the limit of motion picture contracts, most
of which can be negotiated on a seven year basis. We may safely leave the
duration of television and interplanetary rights to the future.
In any event, watch all of your rights all of the time;
they are the basis of your entire literary estate. You will find plenty
of people willing and anxious to steal them, and in remote corners of the
earth, too. I have had rights purloined in Italy, Russia, and India, and,
of course, New York; but naturally a man cannot be expected to watch all
the thieves on this planet when, so much of his time is spent on Mars and
Venus . . .
Beloved by small boys, emulated by growing lads, and sighed
over on occasion by adults, Tarzan of the Apes remains today the symbol
of the back-to-the-primeval spirit that gives little boys the nightmare
and either sends their elder brothers mooning up the stairs to day dream,
or ejects them whooping out the front door looking for a dog to chase.
Eighteen years ago, Edgar Rice Burroughs playfully conceived
"Tarzan of the Apes." He did it with no more African experience than came
to him as department manager of Sears-Roebuck, and later treasurer of the
American Battery Co.
Today, Tarzan is in the magazines, cartoon strips, novels,
newspapers, and on the radio, and stage. Besides the long Tarzan series
Mr. Burroughs has written "Thuvia, Maid of Mars," "The Warlord of Mars,"
and in fact a complete series of adventures in love, war, and death on
Mars. His character Tarzan, one can honestly say, has been pressed into
the consciousness of the nation.
