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One of the most fascinating mysteries about publishers, at least to authors, is the method or methods by which they determine the availability of manuscripts. Fine word, availability. Noncommittal and all that. It has no taint of infallibility—which is the last attribute a publisher makes pretensions to.
There are places where one man decides whether a manuscript will do and there are places where it takes practically the whole clerical force and several plebiscites to accept or reject the author’s offering. One house which stands in the front rank in this country accepts and rejects mainly on the verdicts of outsiders—specialists, however, in various fields. Another foremost publishing house has a special test for “popular” novels in manuscript. An extra ration of chewing gum is served out to all the stenographers and they are turned loose on the type-written pages. If they react well the firm signs a contract and prints a first edition of from 5,000 to 25,000 copies, depending on whether it is a first novel or not and the precise comments of the girls at page 378.
Always the sales manager reads the manuscript, if it is at all seriously considered. What he says has much weight. He’s the boy who will have to sell the book to the trade and unless he can see things in it, or can be got to, there is practically no hope despite Dr. Munyon’s index finger.
Recently a publishing house of national reputation has done a useful thing—we are not prepared to say it is wholly new—by establishing a liaison officer. This person does not pass on manuscripts, unless incidentally by way of offering his verdict to be considered with the verdicts of other department heads. But once a manuscript has been accepted by the house it goes straight to this man who reads it intensively and sets down, on separate sheets, everything about it that might be useful to (a) the advertising manager, (b) the sales manager and his force, and (c) the editorial people handling the firm’s book publicity effort.