Over the next eighteen months he sent the manuscript to ten different publishers, but they all responded that it was "Unsuitable for our list" or "Too long for children". In the end he began to lose hope and toyed with the idea of throwing away the script. He eventually tried it at a small family publishing-house, K. in Stuttgart. Michael Ende's manuscript was accepted by company director Lotte Weitbrecht who liked the story. Her only stipulation was that the manuscript had to be published as two separate books.