Then again, the agent can be of use to the author in sparing him some of the bitterness that the author feels when his manuscript is rejected. Who that has read it can ever forget the story of how Hawthorne, while still struggling for success, submitted a collection of short stories to a publisher, and of how the publisher, not having much capital, laid the manuscript aside, intending to publish it when things were a little easier; and how Hawthorne, after months of dreary waiting, wrote an angry letter to the publisher, and when he got the manuscript back, in bitter, hopeless rage burned it up? Years afterward the publisher admitted that the manuscript contained some of the most exquisite work Hawthorne had ever written. This story emphasizes the intense sensitiveness of the author about his work. Often after two or three rejections he will give the manuscript up as hopeless and of no value, while it may be that he has only failed to find the house that is looking for that kind of book. An agent, if he has once taken the book up, does not drop it so quickly. Only recently an agent sold a book which had been declined by fifteen houses to the sixteenth. He is willing to persevere with a manuscript and with an author, in spite of rebuffs and discouragement, if he believes that the author has merit; and if he is willing to persevere with an author in the day of small things, he will reap his reward later on.
In conclusion the writer believes that the agent, as he has tried to indicate, can perform a definite and valuable service to both author and publisher by helping the author to bring his wares to the man who will publish them most advantageously, and by obtaining for the author the prices that such wares are worth in the open market, and he can help the publisher by acting as a sifter and bringing before the publisher and editor manuscripts that are really worthy of consideration.
The position of literary adviser to a publishing house differs in its duties, according as the adviser may be employed in a house highly organized, or in one that is not. When the organization is such that the duties in the various departments are not well differentiated, the adviser's work will be likely to involve many things that properly belong to the manufacturing and advertising departments. These conditions, however, if they exist at all, will be found in the smaller houses, or in houses which, as to personnel, are undergoing reorganization; they are, and ought to be, exceptional.