To the extent that they produce books that anyone wants to read, they usually work in conjunction with the culture studios, or, more bluntly, simply sell serial numbers to studios, which do all the work themselves.
Deutsch's big break came with the von Papen Memoirs, the diary of Hitler's most able diplomat, and he sold serial rights to a Sunday newspaper for £30,000, which made it a bestseller.
And soon, independent comic companies bypassed newsstands altogether, selling their serials directly to stores that specialized in comic books.
Jessica Ruston was inspired by something she heard and has just sold a serial based on it.
Once Crane had retrieved his still unpublished work he gave it to another publisher, Irving Bacheller, who sold the serial rights to the Philadelphia Press.
Six weeks later you have a novel, he wrote, and "if you sell the serial rights and film rights, you do very well".
"I was then so frightened of telling my boss that I went back and sold the serial rights first – The Sun paid £20,000 and Today £10,000," Ms Hudson told the publishing website BookBrunch.
Through his friend William Dean Howells he had made contact with a new young editor at Collier's Magazine in the United States, to whom he sold the serial rights for his new story.
If McBride, who claims to be a lifelong Labour supporter, has truly been born again, why did he allow his publishers to sell the serial rights to the Daily Mail at a time when he must have known it would be used to inflict maximum damage on the Labour party?
Dickens was busy writing a novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, which was not selling well in serial form.
