Lloyd E. Smith
The documented author credit
Lloyd E. Smith is the abbreviated author credit for Lloyd Edwin Smith, a writer and editor of practical reference works. Library records connect the expanded name with Making Words Work for You and The Practical Encyclopedia, while his Little Blue Book publications include guides to language and self-education. How to Write Little Blue Books belongs to this instructional work. The publication record is clearer than the surviving personal biography, so no unverified life dates are supplied here. The guide offers a useful view of writing as purposeful work shaped by a particular publisher, compact format and intended readership.
A manual shaped by its publishing format
Smith’s guide makes a useful distinction between an author’s desire to say something and a publisher’s ability to place it before a paying audience. Subject matter, length, presentation, and reproducibility become linked questions. The Little Blue Book format is therefore not merely packaging around an independent text; it helps determine the kind of instruction the writer is asked to produce.
How to Write Little Blue Books
Lloyd E. Smith addresses would-be contributors to the Little Blue Books from both sides of the editorial desk: he has written numerous volumes and prepared other people's manuscripts for publication. The series needs accessible instruction that can attract enough readers to remain economically viable. Private philosophical revelations, narrow dissertations, and cherished unpublished poems are therefore poor candidates, however much their authors value them. Smith connects the choice of subject with the less glamorous demands of length, typography, spelling, and preparation for the printer. His frank account makes a small book's physical and commercial limits part of the writing problem itself. Read as a document of popular publishing, the manual shows how a program of inexpensive self-education shaped the knowledge offered to a mass audience. English text of Little Blue Book No. 1366, copyright 1929.
Read prescriptions in their original setting
Distinguish advice about clear exposition from requirements specific to this series. A rule about manuscript preparation may reflect the production process as much as a general literary principle. Smith’s position on both sides of the editorial desk gives his judgments practical force, while his commercial priorities remain visible. The guide can illuminate inexpensive self-education without requiring its 1929 publishing instructions to function as present-day submission rules.