LITERARY “RACKET”

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 70, 15 December 1933, Page 13 (Supplement)

LITERARY “RACKET”

(Continued from previous page.) author’s cheque, and that should be a lot of money, because writers are so well paid. The Agency is naturally eager to get this big money, and therefore the interests of the author and the Agency are one. Reading the “Revise.” She thereupon sends 20 dollars, and settles down to wait once more. Sure enough along comes the revised manuscript, although the weeks between were long for Miss Noblik. She takes it to her room and with palpitating heart tears through the story that is to place her in the van of American writers. She recognises the names and ;he major incidents, but as to improvenent: ‘there is none. The story does rot hold her from the first word. It is rot like the stories in the “Saturday livening Post’’ or “Liberty." It isn’t ike anything.

Mary is staggered.. But she sends he story back to the Agency with a imid letter asking for immediate mar:eting. Then she hears nothing for six aonths. By this time her faith is omewhat less than whole, and she nites frantically for news. The reurn mail brings her a list of publishrs by whom her story has been reected; and at the bottom of the list s the name of one publisher with this tern alongside: Under Consideration.

r ery truly, the Agency. This time she may be mollified, bur ooner or later she rebukes the Agency or being unreliable and fraudulent fter having promised, in previous leters and in advertisements, to market let manuscript. There comes a cold nd dignified renly to the effect that liss Noblik is unnecessarily hasty, and hat she is entirely under a misapprelension, since we have submitted her manuscript to the leading publishers nd they have found it wanting. Mary vrites back that she paid 20 hardearned dollars to have them revise her tory and make it saleable. The End of Poor Mary. The Agency retorts: You accepted our Revision Service voluntarily. If you vill read over our circulars you will ind that*we do not guarantee publicaion. This would be absurd unless we were publishers ourselves, which we ire not. We try to pick out manuscripts with sales possibilities, but we >ffer no assurance of publication. That is the end of Mary Noblik. Of 'oure, all cases do not end this way. In fact, the majority, in actual percentage, never get beyond the first stages of a detailed analysis. Miss Noblik’s mistake was in thinking that we make our living by the 10 ?er cent, marketing commission. We lo get 10 per.cent, if we are fortunate enough to sell a book, which has been mown to happen. But our real source >f Income is the two-dollar handling "ee, the rated fees for detailed analysis >y tlie Editor, and the fancy charges 'or Revision. Whose fault is it that die mistook the fountain of our income? Alas, dear dupe, two dollars multiflied by 20,000 fools yields more than 10 per cent, taken five times a year.