Lloyd E. Smith's candid guide opens the door to the fiercely selective world of the Little Blue Books, the wildly popular mass-market series he knew from the inside as assistant editor and contributor. He explains what the editors want, what they reject, and why the series became a distinctive "University in Print": practical, affordable, and aimed at broad appeal, self-education, and self-improvement rather than vanity, obscurity, or paid publication. Writers are urged to bring their own strong subject ideas, prove their qualifications, and respond quickly to assignments, with finished manuscripts due within sixty days. The book then becomes a meticulous handbook for would-be contributors, covering everything from subject selection and profitable nonfiction topics to exact manuscript preparation: length, spacing, pagination, spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and the proper use of italics, boldface, foreign accents, footnotes, tables of contents, and indexes. Smith also explains how to abridge classics, add introductions, biographies, and notes, and prepare simple illustrations and typography for the series' strict format. Practical, exacting, and encouraging, it is both a writer's manual and a map to publishing success. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.