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Publishers and the public prefer long novels to short ones. It is curious that the most popular novels of the day—those of Miss Marie Corelli and Mr. Hall Caine—are also the longest novels of the day. From ninety to a hundred thousand words is a good length, but there is no objection to a hundred and twenty thousand or even more. Only reviewers have a prejudice against long novels. The beginner should fix for himself a minimum of seventy thousand words. I am bound to state, however, that modern authors, running counter to the wishes of the public, show a tendency to make their novels shorter and shorter. More than one novel of less than forty thousand words has been issued at six shillings.

When the novel is finished it should be read aloud in its entirety to, or by, some discerning and patient friend, and then revised once more. This operation is extremely important.

It is advisable to have the manuscript typewritten in duplicate, since it may experience many vicissitudes before it reaches a printer’s; the cost of a second copy is half that of the first All the sheets should be stitched together, not wired, in one batch, and enclosed in stout brown paper wrappers.

I shall deal fully with the question of negotiating the sale of novels in the chapter entitled “The Business Side.”

It is impossible to advise the beginner about the kind of novel which he should write. But he may be advised not to write either a historical novel or what was styled a few years ago a “sex-novel.” The historical novel is an exhausted form of fictional art; no historical novel with a spark of genius has been published for years, and the market for historical novels is very flat The truth is that the historic convention has become stereotyped and lifeless, and until some powerful talent takes it in hand and rejuvenates it, the beginner will do well to avoid it The sex-novel still lives and cuts a figure in the world; some of the best and some of the most notorious books of the past decade have been sex-novels. For obvious reasons, however, this particular variety of emotional narrative demands a tact, a discretion, an equipoise, which it is extremely unlikely that any beginner will possess.

A domestic novel of modern life, having a simple, strong plot conscientiously worked out with as much vivacity, colour, and movement as the author can command, is at once best suited to the beginner’s pen, and most likely to find a sympathetic audience.