ts publications, and
which possesses the requisite skill to lay its wares before the public
advantageously. The success of many a book has depended more on the
shrewdness of the publisher in laying it before the public in
attractive and seductive guise than either the public or the author
often realize.

If the publisher accepts the manuscript offered to him by the literary
agent, the latter arranges terms with the publisher, making as good a
business arrangement as all the conditions justify. He draws up the
contract with the publisher, and after the book is published, he
collects the royalties from the publisher as they fall due. He enables
the author to avoid any house that has a reputation for sharp
practices. Knowing the personnel of the different houses, he knows the
proper man to approach in offering his book, and he is of aid to the
author in blowing his trumpet for him, telling what his previous work
has been, in a way that the author, sensitive as he often is, cannot
properly do. In short, the agent takes off the author's shoulders all
the business end of publishing, leaving him free to devote himself to
his own proper vocation without the vexatious business worries which
he finds all the more vexatious because he has not had any training or
experience in coping with them.

I think the literary agent can be, and as time goes on, will be, of
increasing use to the publisher. The literary agent, if he understands
his business, takes up no manuscript in which he does not believe.
When he brings the publisher a manuscript, it is because he thinks
there is money in such manuscript for the publisher, for the author,
and as far as commission is concerned, for himself. While it is an
advantage to the author that he should have the judgment of the agent,
because the agent looks at any manuscript from a cold-blooded business
point of view, it is also of advantage to the publisher to know that
the agent, free from the confidence and perhaps the bias that the
author has about his own wares, is offering him any individual
manuscript because he (the agent) believes it will sell. The result is
that the publisher gets to know that the agent won't offer him a
manuscript that is not up to a certain standard, and which, even
though it should in the end not prove suitable to this publisher's
special list, must receive careful consideration. In this way the
agent becomes of use to the publisher because he tries never to offer
hi