Dear Mr Cornwell What do you think of Macmillan’s New Writing scheme? (Link here http://www.panmacmillan.com/aboutPan/macmillannewwriting.html to save you looking it up). Opinion seems to be about evenly split over whether it is a genuine attempt to find new writers, whether it is some kind of scam (although if it is a scam, I can’t see what Macmillan get out of it), or whether it is simply a bad idea doomed to failure (because literary agents already know every writer who has talent). If the scheme had been in existence when you were trying to find a publisher for the first Sharpe book, would you have considered it? What chiefly puzzles me is the logistics of assessing many hundreds of submissions. From your experience of the publishing industry (and your editor’s?), do you think it’s possible for a publisher to do that, and how might they go about it? Thanks in advance for any thoughts on the subject. Carole