This, again,
gives trouble, and makes people detest you and your performance, and
contributes to the end which you have steadily in view.
I do not think it is necessary to warn young lady novelists, who possess
beauty, wealth, and titles, against asking Reviewers to dine, and
treating them as kindly, almost, as the Fairy Paribanou treated Prince
Ahmed. They only act thus, I fear, in Mr. William Black's novels.
Much may be done by re-writing your book on the proof sheets, correcting
everything there which you should have corrected in manuscript. This is
an expensive process, and will greatly diminish your pecuniary gains, or
rather will add to your publisher's bill, for the odds are that you will
have to publish at your own expense. By the way, an author can make
almost a certainty of disastrous failure, by carrying to some small
obscure publisher a work which has been rejected by the best people in
the trade. Their rejections all but demonstrate that your book is
worthless. If you think you are likely to make a good thing by employing
an obscure publisher, with little or no capital, then, as some one in
Thucydides remarks, congratulating you on your simplicity, I do not envy
your want of common sense.
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