Dear sir or madam:

I’m in receipt of your let­ter dat­ed May 30, 1966. It was quite a whirl­wind to get to me because, you see, you didn’t address the let­ter to any­one spe­cif­ic. But I’m the paper­backs pub­lish­er here, so nat­u­ral­ly, your let­ter did make safe pas­sage to me. I pub­lish all sorts of gen­res: hard-boiled detec­tive, sci­ence fic­tion, West­erns, fan­ta­sy, fatal­ism noir, adven­tures of all kinds, and even the odd fam­i­ly dra­ma. (Think “Ozzie and Har­ri­et” meets Shake­speare.) I’m always look­ing for new voic­es in the vein of L’Amour, Chan­dler, and Asi­mov. I love work­ing with new authors, but I must take you to task first.

I’m “Madam.” You could have found that out eas­i­ly enough. Call the pub­lish­ing house and ask. Glo­ria, the recep­tion­ist, gets calls like this dai­ly. There’s no shame in accu­ra­cy. But in fact, I’m a Lady. The Queen bestowed that hon­or on me last year for my long career in publishing.

You say you’ve writ­ten a book. More truth­ful­ly, you’ve writ­ten a man­u­script. My job is to deter­mine if it’s wor­thy of being a book. If not, you can look else­where. I can’t own the rights to your ideas. But writ­ing paper­backs isn’t tru­ly a job. Yes, you could be assigned to one or more of the series we pub­lish and you’d be con­stant­ly writ­ing, just as the min­er is always dig­ging and the milk­man does noth­ing but deliv­er milk. But you’d have to prove your­self first. And I’m hard to impress.

I’m not famil­iar with Lear hav­ing writ­ten a nov­el, if we’re speak­ing of Edward Lear. Non­sense poet­ry for chil­dren, yes. But not a nov­el. And not one about a dirty man who has a clingy wife who doesn’t under­stand. And at that, under­stand what? I’m not sure I’m clear on your story.

But I am intrigued with the son who works for the “Dai­ly Mail.” You say that’s a steady job. I imag­ine that’s true. But what does he do for them? Write? Pho­to­graph? Spy of some sort? Did you know news­pa­pers have spies? A mist enlight­en­ing fact. There might be some­thing to pur­sue with that idea. Why would he want to be a paper­back writer? Is this your own pro­jec­tion? I’m most curi­ous about this.

I don’t know of many British writ­ers who are pub­lish­ing nov­els of 1,000 pages of more. We cer­tain­ly try to keep our paper­backs light in weight and crisp in pro­duc­tion. Plen­ty of for­eign writ­ers through­out his­to­ry have nov­els ced­ing toward such lengths. But not British sub­jects. We’re curt and gen­er­al­ly unflus­tered enough to not need more than a few hun­dred pages to get the sto­ry out.

Plus, frankly, style can’t dic­tate length. Read­ers get bored with books even if they have an ele­gant style. Your brain can only han­dle so much pur­ple prose. They want thorns and road­blocks and as much blood as they can get with­out an entire world war start­ing. But too much flow­ery lan­guage turns read­ers sour quickly.

I grant you, there are peo­ple out there who could live sole­ly on long books that are heavy on, albeit not filled with, beau­ti­ful writ­ing. I know an Amer­i­can agent who’ll read Dos­toyevsky over Dick­ens any day. He’s mes­mer­ized by the details and thor­ough expla­na­tions because it’s an entire learn­ing expe­ri­ence about serfs and pol­i­tics and the mores of soci­ety. But that’s not for me.

Also, it’s nev­er bad to always be writ­ing, but it’s a good idea to let a pub­lish­er review your man­u­script or ideas before send­ing more their way. It’s just a pro­fes­sion­al cour­tesy. No, actu­al­ly, it’s an aware­ness of the val­ue of time. Not just my time but yours. I might well be able to help steer you for­ward on some­thing you’re writ­ing that I know noth­ing about while we’re dis­cussing the man­u­script already in hand.

Also, I could no more change your style than I could change your eye col­or. You might be able to adjust to the style of one kind of genre or anoth­er, but if you’ve got a style, the effort to change you isn’t worth my time and effort. You’ve either got some­thing I like or you don’t. Now, you could change around a great many things in your man­u­script, but style is what will make you stand out in first impres­sions. And if I don’t like your style, some­one else will. I know it’s tremen­dous­ly daunt­ing to have to find that per­son, but once you do, ah glo­ry, you can be set for life with that publisher.

Speak­ing of set for life, no one makes much mon­ey in paper­backs. Cer­tain­ly not a mil­lion overnight. You might be lucky to get $5,000 for the whole of a book’s life. We offer most of that up-front. If the book sells more than 50,000 copies, you might earn roy­al­ties. Some do—but not many. I do, though, appre­ci­ate your con­fi­dence. But I can’t judge the strength of it with­out see­ing your actu­al work.

But how can I? I don’t know if you’re “sir” or “madam” because you didn’t sign your name and you includ­ed no return address. I’m dis­ap­point­ed that you didn’t know enough to not send your tome to me, but I’m hav­ing this let­ter pub­lished in all the Lon­don papers in hopes you read one of them and real­ize your errors. Suf­fice it to say, I can’t return any­thing to you, but if you do get in touch, I’ll make an earnest com­mit­ment to read­ing your man­u­script. I just want to get more of a fla­vor of you before I set aside the time. To avoid myr­i­ad imposters to your claim, if you tell me the title for Chap­ter 9, then I’ll be able to con­firm that you’re the gen­uine author.

One thing I’ll give away here is that I love how you inter­po­lat­ed your let­ter with the lyrics from “Frère Jacques.” A nurs­ery rhyme hid­ing dis­dain for Domini­can fri­ars (the Jacobin) might well be some­thing pur­su­ing on a larg­er, wider lev­el. I can see that being a mas­ter­ful part of a detec­tive sto­ry relat­ed to the death of some reli­gious per­son who held some secret that must be discovered.

I’ll tell you, though, I made my mark in pub­lish­ing in clas­sic lit­er­a­ture, which is how I got my lady­ship, so paper­backs pub­lish­ing is sort of the dessert phase of my career. But I not­ed well the lyri­cal nature of your let­ter. Some obvi­ous rhymed inter­twined with free verse. I’d say you might have a career in music, although musi­cians are unlike­ly to ever receive knight­hoods because the cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance might require decades in that career to ever advance to Sir or Lady. It seems most musi­cians these days don’t last long or their impact can’t be defined well enough for the Queen to revise their birthright.

Now that you know who I am, please ring me up. Tell Glo­ria the chap­ter title and she’ll put you through.

Sin­cere­ly,

Lady Win­ston

pub­lish­er, Apple Books

I’m a huge fan of The Bea­t­les. Odd­ly enough, though, I don’t often write about them. When I do, it’s usu­al­ly some­thing relat­ed to John Lennon. But I was lis­ten­ing to “Paper­back Writer” by Paul and I won­dered what kind of response his let­ter might get from a pub­lish­er. I’ve work in book pub­lish­ing for more than 25 years, so I leaned into my expe­ri­ences to write this sto­ry, which I put in the form of an epis­tle. I don’t know that I’ve had more fun writ­ing a sto­ry than I did with this one.