There is this battleground, see. On one side, shooting from the jungle, there are the literary agents. On the other, shooting from the swamps, are the publishers. And contrary to what you’re probably thinking the writer isn’t bleeding on the barbed wire, caught in the crossfire. Hell, no. The writer’s at home in silent safety, pencils sharpened, ruler straightened, papers just so, about to begin A New Work, for which the literary agent will extract from the publisher an advance twelve times bigger than the writer ever dared to hope for or believed possible.