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Because the publishing business at that time was in the hands of old stuffed shirts. Publishing was a very respectable business, and they didn't do any flamboyant advertising. They were conservative souls with gold watch chains across their fat bellies, and they would sit in their offices. They wouldn't dream of going out for a book. The author came crawling to them. In those days the book publisher was everything. The movies were offering pittances. There was no radio and television. Magazines weren't paying those huge prices you hear tossed about today.

Do you think Liveright changed publishing?

He, Ben Huebsch, Simon & Schuster and Alfred Knopf. These were the young firms, and oh, boy, were they resented by the old timers!

Now, Liveright and Knopf had a great feud going.

A lot of people had feuds with Alfred.

Well, Knopf was a young publisher starting out with literary ideas, and along came Horace Liveright, who he thought was cheap, and flamboyant. Alfred “had the honor to announce the publication of the Such-and-Such Sage,” you know, and here was Horace doing books like Black Oxen. Also, just about the time I went there he published a sizzler by Samuel Hopkins Adams, masquerading under the name of Warner Fabian, called