Writing to Sell

Reminiscences about the author's long friendship with Scott Meredith, his literary agent since 1951 when Clarke first stepped on ''the sacred concrete of Manhattan'', plus some reflections on being professional writer.

This essay exists in two somewhat different versions. The first part, except for an occasional sentence, is substantially the same. The second parts consists of Clarke's suggestions of books that ''somebody ought to write.'' These are qualitatively and quantitatively different in both versions; the one in Greetings... contains four such synopses, only two of which are almost the same as in the version in 1984: Spring where there are altogether ten synopses.

The information in the ''Sources'' of Greetings... that the piece first appeared in 1984: Spring appears to be erroneous. According to the prefatory note in the earlier book it was written as an introduction to the second revised edition of Writing to Sell (Harper and Row, New York, 1977) by Scott Meredith, Clarke's long-time literary agent. Some of the book synopses at the end were originally published in The Worm Runner's Digest, vol. XIV, no. 2, 1972.