The wisdom of the crowd
Francesca Peacock on the history of publishing by subscription
You could be forgiven for thinking that the crowdfunding model used by Unbound is a relatively novel invention. But it runs back far beyond the internet age. In 1795, the novelist Fanny Burney wrote to her brother ahead of launching a campaign for her third novel Camilla, to ask 'must we have proposals printed? or will newspaper advertisements suffice?' — the situation was a relatively simple one: her readers would come up with the money in advance of receiving their copy and would, in exchange, see their name printed in a list of supporters inside the book.
But Burney was far from the first to draw on the ‘subscription’ model. It’s been in use since the 17th century, when paying readers were greeted by an 11-language dictionary published in 1617, or, in later years, hefty works by John Dryden and Alexander Pope. For Pope, subscription was the chosen means of financing his bold attempt to translate all of the Iliad and the Odyssey into rhyming couplets.
As Pope’s project confirmed, subscription allowed niche, expensive books — huge folios of maps, or large illustrated scientific diagrams — to find a readership. It allowed authors to publish just what their coterie wanted, no matter how arcane the subject might have seemed to ‘the publishers’. It’s a method of publication which lives on, not just at Unbound, but also at the punchy literary fiction publisher, And Other Stories, and also in the contemporary cornucopia Substack, where readers are able to pay for everything from the history of fishing flies to listicles to pieces like this.
By the time she penned her questions to her brother, Fanny Burney had published two novels, Evelina and Cecilia, in the normal way. She had sold the copyright to the publishers, who then received most of the rest of the profits from the work. She’d had many problems with her first two books — publishers not paying her what she felt she was worth, and delaying bringing out new editions — and, for her third book, she felt she needed a change. After all, if a book in that period ended up doing well, the author found themselves at the end of a rough financial deal. Some might suggest not much has changed there.
Subscription, in that period, was also a gloriously socially-conscious way of publishing books: one which used the prestige of appearing in the opening pages of the book — amongst lists of high-society darlings and dowager duchesses — to defray the cost of publication onto the readers.
It sounds like a win-win situation, doesn’t it? Why, then, are Burney’s letters about her choice of publication so intensely anxious? Writing about her decision, she notes…
'This is in many—many ways unpleasant and unpalatable to us both; but the real chance of real use and benefit to our little darling overcomes all scruples, and, therefore, to work we go!'
‘She put the needs of motherhood above her fear of social embarrassment’
There is something feverish about Burney’s repeated dashes, and exclamation marks. She writes as if she were a character in one of her novels: her fear and trepidation in her ink. Burney’s original idea for publication was to print it herself, but the costs of paper 'raised by these late Acts to be tremendous' were prohibitive. (William Pitt, the Prime Minister, had increased taxes on commodities, such as paper, to pay for Britain’s involvement in the wars of the French Revolution). Accordingly, she turned to subscription publication as something of a last resort: for her, it had the overtones of charity — of asking for money from those who should have been her social equals.
Subscription publication, as a model, unavoidably had undertones of an earlier model: it was the 18th-century heir to the tradition of patronage, where wealthy aristocrats would bankroll authors and poets they favoured. There’s a distinct echo of this in Burney’s own list of subscribers: as a former member of George III and Queen Charlotte’s court, Burney didn’t struggle to get high society love. Their names were included in alphabetical order — from Edmund Burke to Anne Radcliffe — but with one key variation: within each letter, the order was determined by rank. The webs of readership that subscription leaves us are, at least in the 18th century, highly socially stratified. This would be somewhat tricky now. Is a head chef of higher standing than a newspaper columnist? It’s hard to say.
But how did Burney overcome her distaste for appealing to her friends for money? In her letters she writes that she did it, in the end, to make a 'little portion' for her 'Bambino'. She put the needs of motherhood above her fear of social embarrassment. Interestingly, for women in the 18th century, writing could be a means of making cash, often in order to support their families. In the preface to her 1792 novel Desmond, Charlotte Smith — who had turned to writing after her dissolute husband had run their family into debtor’s jail — wrote about her predicament. As an author, she knew her readers would assume that her writing had been 'acquired … by the sacrifice of domestic virtues'. She was at pains to assure them of the opposite: 'It was in the observance, not in the breach of duty' that she wrote. In other words, her writing allowed her to be a solvent working mum.
Writing in the 18th century was a job with few formal barriers, and intellectual property was one of the few types of property women could own — but at the same time, contemporary critics railed against women selling their works. For some women, who were writing novels about coquettes or poems about domestic duties, subscription publication afforded a way around this: a means of printing which guaranteed them money, but preserved the sense that they were only sending their work to an extended network of friends.
There’s one name I haven’t yet mentioned which occurs among the list at the beginning of Burney’s Camilla. In the ‘A’ section — among the socially ordinary — is one 'Jane Austen, Steventon'. It is one of only two times Jane Austen’s name appeared in print during her lifetime, as her books were published anonymously. (The other time was another subscription: an 1808 book of sermons). It’s generally thought that Austen’s father bought her subscription to Camilla as a present. It was certainly a formative gift: not long after reading, Austen picked up her pen to write First Impressions — what would later become Pride and Prejudice. And, in Northanger Abbey, she uses Camilla as an example when writing her 'defence' of novels: she calls it, and others, 'work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed'. In the pages of literary history, subscription publication has a lot to answer for.