SOURCE: Johanningsmeier, Charles. “What Literary Syndicates Represented to Authors: Saviors, Dictators, or Something In-Between.” In Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: The Role of Newspaper Syndicates, 1860-1900, pp. 99-125. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

In the following excerpt, Johanningsmeier examines the relationship between late nineteenth-century authors and the literary syndicates, which often provided lesser-known authors with an opportunity to broaden their readership.

A great many stories are published in the papers and sent out by these syndicates, but the competition of writers is so exceedingly great in this matter that the rates are not worth working for.

William H. Hills, editor of The Writer, 1888

The Sunday newspaper magazine, supplied with fiction by the syndicates, “has lifted the man of letters out of the slough of despond and given him a chance in the struggle for existence. It has eliminated Grub street [sic], and has enabled genius to market its...