Fascinating history here on the role of literary agents and how an unsavory scammer sensed the opportunity to disrupt the "gentlemanly" practice of submitting manuscripts to only one publisher at a time, instead making the publishers compete on price for a sought after book.

Meet the Literary Agent Who Invented the Book Auction
In 1952, literary agent Scott Meredith did the unthinkable: he sent the same manuscript to ten publishers at the same time, and single-handedly invented the book auction. At least, that’s how Mered…
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