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It is almost certain that the manuscript will be refused by the first publisher to whom it is submitted. The beginner must not be discouraged, but must send it on to another firm and continue to send it on to other and still other firms until either it is accepted or he has lost faith in it. There are about seventy reputable firms of general publishers, and the fact that a manuscript has been declined by ten out of this seventy is by no means an absolute proof, though it may justify a presumption, that the remaining sixty will also decline it The beginner should despatch the manuscript as long as he believes in its worth. Many manuscripts have been refused by all the best firms and then successfully issued by a second-rate firm. An element of chance or “flukiness” must of necessity enter into the question of the acceptance or rejection of any given manuscript by any given firm. Publishers are human, and their “readers,” or literary advisers, are very human. I speak feelingly, for I have been a publisher’s reader. Consider what happens to your manuscript when it enters the publisher’s office. In the first place, it is a mere item in a crowd, for a firm will receive perhaps twenty unsolicited manuscripts a week; a clerk coldly enters particulars of it in a book, and it is shoved aside with other manuscripts to await the casual inspection of a partner or manager. In the second place, that partner or manager, being human, will probably allow the pile of manuscript to accumulate until it looks formidable. He will then approach his task with fear and dislike; he will perhaps unduly hurry through his task. It is wrong for him to do so; it is bad policy for him to do so; but he is human; he is not an unerring, unresting, unhasting machine of literary discrimination; perhaps he has bought a horse and wishes to get home early in order to try it You may think that such trifles ought not to affect the chances of your manuscript with an eminent firm of publishers. They ought not, but they do. Well, the turn of your manuscript comes; the great man glances at it; he does not know your name, and since nineteen manuscripts out of twenty by unknown authors are worthless, he naturally begins with a melancholy apprehension that yours is worthless. He hopes there is something in it, but he is afraid there is nothing in it. The merest detail may fatally influence him in those crucial moments. Remember that the great man is not reading your work; he is only tasting it to decide whether it is good enough to send to his reader. A single dull page, a sentence, a phrase, an unconscious irritation of one of his thousand susceptibilities, may ultimately cause him to cast your manuscript on the left, among the goats.

But I will suppose that he is vaguely impressed by your manuscript, and that he sends it to Mr. So-and-So for a detailed opinion. Now Mr. So-and-So has also been born in sin. He is a creature of highly educated taste, of honourable impulses; but he is mortal. He is either paid by a fixed salary or by a fee per manuscript; and in either case he wants to spend as little time on your work as is consistent with his duty. Reading books in typescript is not an agreeable occupation, and the fact that Mr. So-and-So passes many hours per week in that occupation does not make it the less disagreeable to him. In a word, Mr. So-and-So is rather bored by the prospect of reading your book. By a piece of thoughtlessness you may put him in a bad humour at the very start As he settles into an easy chair, and glances at the clock, and faces the task, the walls of his study may hear him exclaim: “I wish these confounded amateurs would employ decent typewriters!” or “Why can’t they pin their sheets together decently?” or “Spilt infinitives all over the place!” or “Fancy beginning right off with a thundering coincidence!”

Even if the reader gets interested in your stuff and actually thinks that it is good, he may decide against it on the ground that it will not be popular. Publishing firms flourish by making profits; and profits are made out of books that sell; and it is the business of the reader to recommend not good books merely, but good books that will sell. When a reader recommends his firm to publish a book, and the publication results in a loss of fifty pounds, the reader loses fifty pounds’ worth of reputation; and if this unsatisfactory phenomenon occurs once too often, he loses the whole of his reputation and his situation also. Therefore, when he likes a manuscript but fears for its popularity, he thinks first of his reputation and his situation. Being a child of Adam, he prefers to run the risk of refusing a good book than to run the risk of compromising his reputation and exposing his employers to monetary loss.

The vast majority of readers’ reports are either unfavourable, or favourable in a halfhearted, cautious way. Not once in a hundred times does a reader recommend a book with enthusiasm. Readers, when they like a book, are disposed to say, in effect: “This book isn’t half bad. On the other hand it isn’t brilliant. The author may do better. On the other hand he may not. It doesn’t really matter much whether you publish the thing or not I won’t prophesy a good sale, but on the whole I should be disposed to say that you would not be ill-advised in publishing it."

I will suppose that the reader has sent in such a report about your work. The report will probably annoy the publisher, who will remark satirically: “I wish these alleged experts of ours would make up their minds one way or the other! What do we pay them for?” If his lists are fairly full, he may unceremoniously decide against the book, despite the reader’s mild approval of it. But vacancies in his list, or some attractive phrase in the reader’s report, may induce him either to read the book himself or to submit it to another reader. In which case the martyrised manuscript has to undergo still another and perhaps more fearful ordeal.

Here I will quote from a letter written by one of the foremost publishers in London:—

“I generally take very great care over the reading of books, first looking at the MSS. myself, and then sending those that seem worthy of it to a very good reader. There remains a further ordeal in the shape of a second reader, who is also first-class, and the unfortunate MS. has sometimes to run the gauntlet of a third reader. It does not follow that because a book is declined, the refusal is on the score of literary merit or demerit. Readers are human, and they have their fads and follies. It must sometimes happen that a MS., though containing real merit, offends the idiosyncrasy of the critic, who incontinently damns it”

These sentences sum up the matter with fairness.

I have given considerable space to the probable adventures of a manuscript in a publisher's office, because it is extremely important that the timid beginner should realise with precision the nature of those adventures, so that he may avoid the indiscretion of being either vexed or discouraged when a manuscript of which he thinks well is refused over and over again.

A publisher should not be allowed to take more than a month in deciding about a submitted manuscript At the expiration of that period, he should be firmly and persistently dunned for either the manuscript or an acceptance. Years may elapse before a good manuscript finds acceptance. The beginner is inclined to say to himself that he will not commence a second book until he knows definitely the fate of the first one. This is a mistake. As an artist he should forget that the first one exists, and should enter upon a new enterprise immediately he has recovered from the slackness and depression which will be the natural reaction from the strain of completing the first.

A list of publishers, with their addresses and some more or less useful notes about their specialties and peculiarities, is included in The Literary Year-Book, published by Mr. George Allen.