FOOTNOTES:
[167:A] "The Principles of Success in Literature," p. 10.
[168:A] "The Principles of Success in Literature," p. 7.
SUCCESS
Minor Conditions of Success
1. Good literature has the same value in manuscript as in typescript, but from the standpoint of author and publisher, it can hardly be said to have the same chances. Penmanship does not tend to improve, and some of the scrawly MSS. sent in to publishers are enough to create dismay in the stoutest heart. It is pure affectation to pretend to be above such small matters. Just as a dinner is all the more appetising because it is neatly and daintily served, so a MS. has better chances of being read and appreciated when set out in type-written characters.
2. Be sure that you are sending your MS. to the right publisher. Novels with a strongly developed moral purpose are not exactly the kind of thing wanted by Mr Heinemann; and if you have anything like "The Woman Who Did," don't send it to a Sunday School Publishing Company. These suppositions are no doubt absurd in the extreme, but they will serve my purpose in pointing out the careless way in which many beginners dispose of their wares. Nearly all publishers specialise in some kind of literature, and it is the novelist's duty to study these types from publishers' catalogues, providing, of course, he does not know them already. The commercial instinct is proverbially lacking in authors; if it were not we should witness less frequently the spectacle of portly MSS. being sent out haphazard to publisher after publisher.