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WRITING FOR MONEY
by A. S. Burack
Editor, The Writer

Writing for publication is hard work. But it is profitable, rewarding work, and the rewards are not confined to those fortunate people who can sell stories to The Saturday Evening Post, write a best-selling book, or get a play produced on Broadway. There are plenty of opportunities for writers of average ability to sell to less competitive markets. For every person who hits the jackpot in writing and achieves big money and fame, there are at least thirty or forty who make comfortable incomes or supplement their earnings by writing a few hours a day. Some of these people have developed regular markets. They may never become famous but they are known to the editors as capable craftsmen who can be depended upon to turn out acceptable work.

To become a successful writer takes determination, courage, and ability. Many people have the ability—not too many are really determined enough or know how to go about writing and selling publishable material. One must be willing to learn the craft, by study and practice—lots of practice. Too many people have the idea that they can become successful writers, simply because they know how to arrange words in correct sequence, or because their friends tell them that they write fascinating letters, or because they occasionally get what they think is a wonderful idea for a story or an article. These are the same people who would not dream of saying, "I'm going to be an artist, or a musician," unless they were prepared to study for years and years. Many people can write fairly well; improving their "fair" writing to the point where they are paid for it is the problem.

How, then, does one go about learning to write for publication? First, you must have something to say—something that will interest, entertain, instruct, or help other people. Second, you must study the markets—decide on the kind of writing you like best, or the type that fits your particular abilities, and where it might be sold. Third, you must practice—write, write, write—until you have learned the fundamentals of the craft. And finally, you must be businesslike in trying to sell what you have written.

The markets for a writer's products are many and varied. Perhaps the biggest market for the free lance is the magazine field. The best-known are the slicks (so-called because they are printed on smooth paper) like The Saturday Evening Post, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Ladies' Home Journal, and so on. Another group is called the pulps (these are printed on rough paper) or the all-fiction magazines, like Adventure, Short Stories, Dime Detective, Thrilling Love, and Blue Book. We might also include in this classification the confession magazines, or true-to-life publications, like True Story, True Confessions, and True Detective. There are, in addition, dozens and dozens of magazines for children and young people, such as American Girl, Boys' Life, Open Road for Boys, Child Life, Jack and Jill, and Story Parade. And finally, there are the trade papers, magazines concerned with a particular industry or business, of which there are several thousand: Boot and Shoe Recorder, The American Baker, American Druggist, Modern Retailing, and The Progressive Grocer, are in this group.

The highest rates to writers are those paid by the slicks, ranging up to seven hundred and fifty dollars, and even more, for a short story of four or five thousand words, and perhaps a little less for nonfiction articles. But because they pay the highest rates, competition among writers is fierce. It is estimated that The Saturday Evening Post receives 100,000 manuscripts a year. The keenest professional writers are working hard and aiming for this market. But this does not mean that it is a closed market. If you can write the kind of material the slicks want, they will buy it. Recently The Saturday Evening Post announced that in one year they had introduced seventy-seven new article writers, forty-four new fiction authors, and seventy-five hitherto unknown poets. They welcome newcomers, but their standards are extremely high.

The pulps pay considerably less than the slick magazines—about one or two cents a word, on the average. Because of the lower pay and lower prestige, new writers do not always consider the pulps as a market, and competition is not so keen as in the slicks. But the pulps buy an enormous number of stories and their requirements are not so exacting as those of the slicks. Most of them stress action and emotion, in contrast to the slicks, which usually want good characterization and more subtle situations. Get hold of a few copies of some of these pulps and see if you would enjoy writing for them. But don't be deceived by what may seem to be a fairly easy job of writing. The technique may seem simple, but it is usually acquired by long practice.

Can you tell interesting stories to children and hold their attention with suspenseful situations and real characters? There are a half-dozen well-known magazines for young children, like Jack and Jill and Story Parade, and many more for older children and teen-agers like Boys' Life, American Girl, and Open Road for Boys. These magazines pay good rates and welcome stories from anyone. Study some sample issues at your library. Note the kind of stories they publish. If you feel that you can do as well, or better, try writing a few and sending them out.

There are about 6,000 trade papers published in the United States. They range from magazines covering the biggest industries in the country to some of the smallest. There is hardly any industry, trade, or profession that does not have at least one magazine covering its field, and some industries have five or more different magazines. Almost all of them purchase material from free lances. Does your druggist have a new way of selling soap? Write it up and try sending it to the American Druggist. What about the unique sale your local department store ran last week—or the new fashion show they put on with the help of the P.T.A.? Any of these ideas might make an interesting article for Modern Retailing, or a similar magazine.

This type of magazine offers a steady and almost limitless market for writers who can give them the kind of material they use. Their rates of payment are not high, but it is possible to write enough to make this a profitable market. They are always on the lookout for new ideas about a particular business, or a factory, or ingenious business methods used by individual stores. Some of them will pay extra for photographs that can be used to illustrate your article. If you can take good pictures, you can combine your skill at photography with your writing ability and sell the results.

The market for motion picture material is almost closed to beginners. Movie producers do not want to see manuscripts by beginners, unless introduced by an agent or someone they can trust. In fact, most studios do not even read unsolicited manuscripts but return them unopened to the sender. The best way to get into the motion picture field is to get your story or book published and the movies will approach you. Radio offers a limited market, open for the most part to those who have the specialized skill needed for this medium. The market for plays, either one-act or three-act, is not large. As far as the Broadway market or professional stage is concerned, it is almost closed for the average beginner. It is difficult to get a producer even to read your script and, unless you have an "in" with someone connected with the business, it is a long and arduous task to try to crash this market. The amateur-play market, however, is a better one for the beginner to try. The play publishers, like Walter Baker & Company; Samuel French, Inc.; and Row, Peterson & Co., are always on the lookout for one- and three-act plays suitable for production by amateur groups, schools, and the like. They pay fairly good rates and often pay on a royalty basis, dividing the royalty paid by the producing groups with the author.

In addition to the markets for writers already discussed, there are many more markets for smaller pieces of fiction or nonfiction. Many of the good magazines purchase poetry, but in limited amounts. The quality magazines like The Atlantic and Harper's, use few poems and only those of the highest quality. There are many poetry magazines published, but most of these are small and pay nothing for material. Perhaps the best known is Poetry, which does pay good rates. Some of the others offer cash prizes for the best poems. Some newspapers accept verse and occasionally pay for it. The best markets in this field are The New York Times Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, and similar papers. If you can write humorous verse, the market is larger and the rates are correspondingly better. Departments in magazines, like the "Post Scripts" of The Saturday Evening Post, use comic and other light verse, and other magazines use it throughout their pages. Fillers and short items are always being bought by the magazines. These can be in the form of humorous experiences, anecdotes, true experiences, and so on. The Reader's Digest pays one hundred dollars for short anecdotes in the "Life in These United States" department. Other magazines offer cash prizes for interesting letters.

Many of the home services and women's magazines purchase non-fiction articles from free-lance writers. They buy recipes and how-to-do-it articles, ranging from an ingenious way of recovering a chair to a new method of planting a garden. Articles on child care and raising can be used by a wide variety of magazines like Parents' Magazine and Baby Talk. The field here is so varied that your best way of discovering the markets is a careful study of the magazines themselves.

The greeting-card publishers purchase thousands of lines of verse from free lances and once you can prove your ability to turn out the special kind of material they need, you will find them a steady and profitable market. Hundreds of poets who vainly strive to sell poetry to the quality poetry magazines would do well to cultivate this market. Study some of the greeting cards you see in the card shop. Sounds easy, you say. Well, don't be too sure. Analyze the way in which they are written and remember that you must be original. The phrase that sounds so good to you may have been used years before. There is a good book on this subject, which contains a list of card manufacturers who will buy verse from free lances. It has lots of good hints, some of the taboos, and many suggestions on how to go about selling your work.^*

Preparing your manuscript is not too difficult or involved. Your script must be typewritten, double-spaced, on sheets of white paper, 8½ x 11 inches. Use a fairly good quality of paper, but it need not be expensive. For stories or articles, leave a margin of at least an inch on all sides of the sheet. Number your pages and be sure to have your name and address on the first page of your manuscript, generally the upper left-hand side. On the right-hand side, you can put the approximate number of words. You needn't count the exact number, since a fairly accurate round figure will be sufficient. Do not tie or bind your manuscript in fancy ribbons. For short stories or articles you can fasten the pages with an ordinary clip. A book-length manuscript should be packed, unbound, in a box such as paper is sold in. When submitting verse, type only one poem to a sheet. A stamped, self-addressed envelope should always accompany your manuscript for its return to you if not accepted by the publisher. Weigh your manuscript carefully and make certain that sufficient postage is placed on your outside envelope and on the return envelope. Manuscripts must be sent via first-class mail, sealed. Large manuscripts may be shipped by prepaid express, and you can ask for its return, if not accepted, via express collect.

You may or may not send a letter with your manuscript. The fact that you are mailing your manuscript to a publisher indicates that you are offering it for sale. If you do write a letter, make it a short one. If it will add value to your material to indicate to a publisher that you are an authority in the field (especially nonfiction) you may do so, but don't send a long biography with your manuscript. Don't say in your letter that the story is a true one. The publisher at first is interested only in your manuscript, and if he likes it he has plenty of time later to get the interesting facts about you that he may need. Your letter, in the case of stories, should merely indicate that you are offering this manuscript for publication at the publisher's usual rates. Remember also that you should submit your manuscript to only one publisher at a time. Keep a carbon copy of your material in case the manuscript is lost in the mails or mislaid.

One of the chief advantages of the writing business is that it offers an open market. For the most part, editors will buy from an absolute unknown as cheerfully as they will buy the products of a famous author. You need no influence or secret password to gain entrance to editorial portals. You don't need an agent, even though most professionals use them. When you have become established, the good literary agents will approach you and offer to handle your work. Until then, you can best submit your manuscripts directly to the markets that use the kind of writing you offer. Persistence counts in selling what you write. The fact that one or two or even more magazines reject your material doesn't mean that it won't sell eventually. Publishing history is full of cases where manuscripts have been rejected by ten or a dozen companies, finally purchased by the fourteenth or twentieth—and then have gone on to become best sellers. Above all, believe in what you are doing. Have confidence in what you write. Be businesslike and persistent in your approach, and you may well become a successful writer. The publishers are really eager to discover new writers—they are constantly on the lookout for fresh talent. Perhaps you can supply them with what they want.

A complete list of markets where manuscripts can be sold, including the names and addresses of all publishers, is published in the various trade magazines for writers. These include:

The Writer, 8 Arlington St., Boston 16, Mass.
The Author and Journalist, 637 Pine St., Boulder, Colo.
The Writer's Digest, 22 E. 12th St., Cincinnati, Ohio.

The magazine is printed by the offset method. Photographs for the covers are donated by local photographers, and drawings are done by local art students. In fact, all material is contributed without charge, although later Mr. Sheldon hopes to be able to pay for it.

Every page of the Listener, which is 5 x 8 inches, is set up by hand. The copy is typed on a second-hand IBM typewriter (an electric machine with proportional spacing) and pasted up in column form. Drawings are also pasted right onto the master sheets, but photographs require a different treatment, since they must be made into halftones first. Headings are done by hand, and advertisers can reproduce any black-and-white ads they choose without extra fee. An ordinary letterhead, according to Mr. Sheldon, makes an attractive advertisement. He says: "We are constantly experimenting with the offset medium and learning lots of things even the printers couldn't tell us. We've become extremely inventive and ingenious in finding the easy way to get the work done." Offset printing is cheaper, as it does not entail any typesetting. The completed page is photographed and printed from the photoelectric plate.

Advertisers are tempted with small fees while the magazine is getting on its feet; twenty-five dollars for a page, fifteen for a half page, ten for one-third page, eight for one-quarter page, and a two-inch one-column advertisement for five dollars.

"Our aim," says Mr. Sheldon, "is to present a real New Hampshire magazine, designed to distribute in an entertaining way the facts about our state—past, present, and future. We want to discover, or at least publish, the work of authors, artists, photographers, poets, etc., who are residents of our state. We especially want to attract the schools and colleges into using our magazine. High-school classes in art and history can, for instance, vie with each other. Colleges can use our pages to transmit to the public a whole stack of information of all sorts. Hobbyists, photography fans, and the like are encouraged to show off within our pages. And on top of that, we do our best to present current radio news to the radio fans. With our third issue we have started a record column and a book column—we hope to expand both into real man-sized departments that will be of special value to New Hampshire readers.

"We want, also, to keep New Hampshire people informed of other things that may be of real interest to them; hence our Backstage column by Ann Jackson. This is going to switch very soon to a straight report on the shows to be seen each month in Boston—on the grounds that such material is not provided anywhere else. I'm also anxious to cover the Boston concert and lecture presentations, since they are important to us up here, but so far I haven't found anybody quite willing to take on the assignment without pay. New York is still too far away from New Hampshire, so I'm not even mentioning things that happen there—but Boston is only next door to many of us, so I see no reason why the better things the Bean City offers shouldn't be added to our state magazine.

"Eventually, too, as our magazine increases, and our staff as well, I'd like to cover the events within our own state in a day-by-day form. A sort of New Hampshire Calendar, each month, listing the plays, concerts, entertainments, sporting events, etc., that are going on; it would be a real public service."

At present there are sixteen pages to an issue. Although the magazine is still suffering from growing pains, subscribers at one dollar a year are enthusiastic. There is still much work to be done before the magazine is off thin ice, but the future of The New Hampshire Listener doesn't look too gloomy.

Many states could support such a publication. The ideal setup is an arrangement with all radio stations in your state whereby you sell them, in advance, the idea of paying for one page in the magazine each month. Radio fans like to read about the personalities on their local stations, and it is probable the stations would welcome this opportunity to get this information out to their listeners. News of the state could be added to the pages, but I can't help feeling that such a magazine shouldn't try to cover so much ground that it becomes a hodgepodge rather than a specialized outlet for specific information, such as news of local radio stations. Such a medium might have a place as a give-away advertising bulletin for radio stations. If this could be worked out, each station would pay part of the costs, covering your expenses and salary. It isn't easy to get money out of anyone, but your radio stations might jump at this monthly way of telling their listeners all about themselves.

There are plenty of headaches in starting such a venture. You have to sell advertising, keep pounding away at trying to raise that subscription rate, and suffer through paper and printing costs.

Not until you have studied many newspapers will you begin to realize how many different types of columns there are. With editors made conscious of the teen-ager as a potential market, it is not impossible that you may dream up a new column idea for the high-school crowd. Elizabeth Watts, in the Boston Globe, does a column called "Almost Twenty-one," which covers high-school activities in Boston. Miss Watts has an extremely readable style and the column tells of the boys' and girls' career plans, school papers, costume problems, and so on.

Photography is coming more and more to be used as the subject of a column. Babies, always with us, might have column possibilities if the writer wrote it in terms of individual babies in the community rather than in all-over advice to mothers of babies. This column would cover differences of each baby's feeding schedules, growth, sleep habits, and the like. Such a feature would only be sold to smaller weeklies. Editing a column of favorite recipes by people well known in your community may give you an "in."

Anything you can link up with the paper's advertisers is so much the better. The writer who first thought of writing up businesses and having the owner pay for the space and photographs will never starve.

Nancy Sasser's food columns are syndicated in many papers. Miss Sasser buys this space herself with the revenue coming from the advertisers she mentions in the column.

A good shopping column that doesn't cost the paper anything can almost always be sold. You buy so much space and then go out and sell parts of it to different advertisers whose wares you write up entertainingly. Here you would spend more time selling than you would writing, but the remuneration is good.

The world is full of subjects and there are hundreds of columns. Study Editor and Publisher, a trade magazine, and you will find columns you did not know existed. There may well be among them one that you can easily handle.

Write to the managing editor by name, if you can get it, and clearly outline what you wish to write about. Send two samples, and if he doesn't answer, write again. Editors have a way of not answering the first letter! I don't know why, unless they sieve people this way, and reply only to those anxious and interested enough, and with faith enough in their ideas, to write again.

When you have made a success of your column in one paper, you may obtain permission from the managing editor to sell it to other newspapers that have no overlap with his circulation.

Writing and Selling Special Feature Articles, by Helen M. Patterson (published by Prentice-Hall, Inc.), is one of the best books ever written for the feature writer. It should be read by anyone interested in newspaper or magazine feature writing.

You may write a column that draws a lot of fan mall and is terrific, but one day you will find, because writing a column is such deadly work (but fun!), that you have gone stale and the writing is becoming torturous to you. I once felt this way while writing a column in a metropolitan daily. The first two years had been a joy, but the last year and a half was a daily, devilish grind. In those two years I had changed and I was not the same person who had started the column, but I could not change its "line" and not only I, but the column suffered as well. It would have been far wiser had I resigned when I had lost my freshness. Too many of us, clinging to security, are afraid to give up a well-paid job. It is like a young girl clinging to her boy friend because she is afraid there won't be another. There always is! But not until she lets go of the first. So whenever you are doing any sort of writing, especially a newspaper column, and find yourself going weary from the strain, stop it; another idea will soon present itself.

There are many sources of information that can be drawn upon by anyone who has an eye for the interesting and timely. Government releases, extension service bulletins, agricultural magazines, press releases from regional radio services, trade journals, and other services await the person who can cull them and pick out those items of interest to farmers and gardeners. In making up programs, it is a good idea to bear in mind the fact that many people living in urban centers have their roots in the country and maintain a keen interest in what is new "down on the farm." Another point to remember is that a judicious mixture of items of interest to the womenfolk with items that are directed at the dirt farmer will have a wider appeal than a wholly specialized program.

There need be no fear that you won't have enough material for a daily program of from five to fifteen minutes. Once you have your name on a carefully selected mailing list, your greatest difficulty will come in choosing the items you consider best. It is important, however, to remember that agricultural interests are regional. What may be good advice for a farmer in the South or West would not necessarily apply to one in the Northeast, and vice versa.

Assuming that you have your materials at hand—what next? Listen to the radio stations in your region and find out which ones do not carry a bona fide farm-and-home program. Then write or call upon the station manager—who, incidentally, will be glad to consider any new idea—and show him how you can supply him with a script as often as he wants it. Point out to him that one of his announcers can broadcast the material at no extra cost to the station other than the cost of your service. Also assure him that, while the material you supply him may be duplicated in scripts you provide for other stations, it will be presented in different words and with different leads. Thus you can write four or five scripts for the same day for different stations, yet each will have its own slant.

Once you have sold your idea, there is a sure-fire way you can check on its drawing power. Many manufacturing concerns print bulletins and pamphlets that are excellent sources of information for the farmer or housewife. These companies will gladly supply copies for free distribution. The American Spice Trade Association, 82 Wall St., New York 5, N.Y., puts out a very interesting and useful booklet called A Manual of Spices, which they will provide free of charge. The Insulation Board Institute, 111 W. Washington St., Chicago 2, Ill., publishes a thoroughgoing booklet on Farm Building Insulation, also for free distribution. For New England consumption, the Wirthmore Feed Company, 261 Washington St., Malden 48, Mass., has a series of bulletins covering the raising of swine, dairy cattle, poultry, goats, and dogs. One of their publications is an extremely good two-hundred-page treatment of poultry management. And there are many other sources of such material.

It isn't necessary to mention the name of these companies on the air, although it may be done if you wish, for they are usually content with the publicity they receive when their bulletins get to your listeners.

By offering such free material on the air you will obtain a very good check on the number of listeners to your programs. Simply ask those interested to send in a post card to the station asking for copies of the bulletins they want. Such bulletin material may be offered once a week or as often as you think it pertinent. If you make your bulletin offerings timely—that is, suggest a gardening pamphlet in the spring—the response will naturally be better.

If you live near your state extension service office, you may be able to obtain bulletins published by them. Should you do this—and remember, these bulletins are usually furnished free to residents of the state—you will have an almost unlimited number of authoritative publications that apply specifically to your locality. And strangely enough, you will find that these publications are, for the most part, unknown to the people of the state.

As for mailing these bulletins, it would probably be best to do it from your home. Have the request cards sent to the sponsoring stations—this gives them an idea of the size of the listening audience—and then have them sent to you once or twice a week. At the end of each month, submit a voucher covering the postage you have used.

Following are a few addresses to write to for program material: The United States Department of Agriculture, Press Service, Washington 25, D.C. Ask for the "Agricultural Clip Sheet" and the "Daily Summary"; the National Grange, Springfield, Mass.; The United States Forestry Service, Philadelphia, Penna.; your state extension service—ask for all news releases and information touching upon agriculture and home management; leading farm magazines, and gardening and home pages of newspapers; the Soil Conservation Service, Washington, D.C.; and if there is one, the state office of this service; the county agent and the home demonstration agent of your own county—these two can be of great help to you; the Office of Price Administration, Room 420, 641 Washington St., New York 14, N.Y.; the National Safety Council, 20 N. Wacker Drive, Chicago 6, Ill.; the Department of Agriculture of your own state. And finally, use your own imagination—keep your eyes open for little items that appear in the newspapers and magazines that you read, and note how many other sources of information they reveal. If you see anything that looks as though it might yield material or bulletins, follow it up—write and ask for ideas.

Finally, in writing up such programs as suggested here, be sure to avoid the dull and colorless—use only that material which you are sure will sound interesting at six or seven o'clock in the morning, when most programs of this type are broadcast. And again, remember that station managers are receptive to new ideas that are presented in a businesslike way.

Last spring, Miss Tooker wrote an article on tatting for a national magazine, and received so many letters from readers interested in tatting patterns that she decided to start a small magazine. Most of the women subscribed, and she mimeographed a five-page bulletin called Shuttle Art, which comes out four times a year.

The tiny paper gives new patterns with directions, and all sorts of helpful hints, such as how to wash tatting and the best way of carrying your work around with you (in a plastic cigarette case or powder puff case). It lists pen pals who want to write to other tatters, and includes mention of tatters or tatting in the news. Each issue contains a short article on some aspect of tatting. Anyone wishing to track down an old type of shuttle or special pattern can advertise in its pages.

In addition, subscribers are free to write to Miss Tooker, and ask anything they would like to know about tatting. If these questions are beyond the people at Shuttle Art headquarters, and they cannot find the answers, the questions are asked of all readers through the editorial columns of the next issue. Readers are always eager to be helpful.

Miss Tooker has made a little money and countless new friends through her idea of starting a paper for those interested in tatting. There must be lots of other hobbyists who might like to have a paper devoted to their own subject.

In California lives Belinda Pink-Ears, the bunny who writes letters, to children. Eight letters cost $1.95, and sixteen letters, $3.75. The letters, suitable for any child from two to ten years of age, are mailed weekly and there is a toy surprise in each.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor charges a dollar for his Cache Lake Letter, which goes out monthly and records stories of wild life in the north country. And New York City has a Santa Claus who writes and mails out four letters for a dollar just before Christmas.

A Scarsdale, New York, address sends out each week "a wonderful illustrated story, plus a letter, games, contests, prizes galore." The charge is five dollars for fifty-two weeks and three dollars for half a year. They advertise in such mediums as The New York Times Magazine.

Puncher is the little Arizona Cowboy who writes letters to youngsters about ranch life. The cost of six letters with three prizes is three dollars.

Cynthia Richardson, in Alexandria, Virginia, sends out biweekly letters signed, "Susie Cucumber." Susie Cucumber is a black-and-white terrier and the series of twenty-eight weekly letters plus a book about the terrier sells for five dollars. In one year, 100,000 letters were sent to Susie Cucumber fans in forty-eight states and to many foreign countries. In all, Susie has written to about 50,000 children.

Mrs. Richardson says she hardly knows how many assistants she has in order to get the letters out on time. She says that one of the more interesting features about her business, and one that feature writers who have written her up never mention, is the fact that her office is staffed by housewives and mothers who want to earn a little money working part time. Susie, she says, is the kind of business where partners thrive and a lot of the routine work like addressing can be carried home. "It's a sort of neighborhood thing,"

When I asked Mrs. Richardson why she sends out the twenty-eight letters a year, she replied, "We think of subscription in terms of weeks. We do this so that grownups can know easily just how long their gift will last and just how much one dollar buys . . . seven weeks for one dollar, fourteen for two, et cetera. Actually we have had to expand that now to cover an additional sixteen weeks of letters."

Each letter is enchantingly decorated with pen-and-ink sketches of Susie Cucumber talking with a squirrel, taking her medicine happily from a spoon, and so on. The letters are copyrighted. One goes,

DEAR PAL,

Oh dear, oh my! How sick I was. I guess I ate too much candy, and you know how ill that makes you feel. Everyone was very kind to me. Bill carried me to bed. Sally Sun covered me up. Then they called my friend, the doctor. He came all the way over to our house to see me. Now I feel much better. While I was a shut-in, I made a present for you. It's a coloring book. Nibbie helped me make it. He hopped up on the window and sat very still while I drew a picture for you. When I showed it to him, he said,

"What I see
 Looks like me!"

Then he stood up on his hind legs and winked at me! I tried to wink back at him, and that made us both laugh. Can you wink your eye like Nibbie Squirrel? Now I must stop and take my medicine so that I will be well soon.

Your winking friend,
SUSIE CUCUMBER

The illustrations on the four pages of standard size, red-bordered stationery add much to the letters. The letters are handwritten and then photographed, and children eagerly anticipate and treasure their very own mail from this lovable little dog. Susie has also written a sixty-four-page book costing $1.25, and about 100,000 copies have been sold to Susie Cucumber fans.

The letters are geared to the four-to-eight mental level. I wish someone would write a series of letters from a horse to our horse-loving twelve-year-old; such letters for pigtailers would have to be of a specialized nature, and adapted to their hobbies and interests. Budding scientists and young animal-lovers would be potential customers.

Mrs. Ivan Stock and Mrs. Charles Waite, the editors, rolled up both sleeves in order to get their magazine operating. They did their own typing, stapled the pages together, did the mailing, and ferreted out likely advertisers. When they were sure their idea was going to work, they hired a tiny office and a girl to help on the circulation. The monthly, supported by advertising, now goes into about 2,500 San Francisco homes.

Any competent writer knowing how to use library books can write such speeches. If your library card index doesn't list a book on the subject you are asked to write about, go to the Readers' Guide. There, classified under subject matter, are lists of magazine articles from the leading magazines, with date of publication. Your library is certain to have at least some of them on the subject you are writing about.

Other ghost writers write speeches for politicians, government officials, and businessmen. Some write articles for merchants for trade journals. The name of the merchant appears on the article, but the ghost writer sells the article and collects for it. There are hundreds of trade journals, and although their pay is not high, you can, once you learn just what they are looking for, be pretty certain of selling your writings to them. They are also a wide-open market for photographers.

First you will need to write a letter to pull in your own business. This should be sent to local dentists, doctors, and small independent businessmen. Larger business firms would probably have their own credit setup.

One man carries on his own collection agency and works at twenty dollars a day at his clients' offices, putting in one day a month at twenty different places of business. He could do the same thing from his own home. If you operated a home agency, you would charge, in addition to services rendered, for all postage, phone calls, and supplies. Letters would, of course, go out on each firm's stationery.

It could be a short step from sending out the payment-due notices to handling the original bills, and soon you might be covering the entire credit side for each business. This would apply, of course, only to small or moderate-sized firms.

I was still too inexperienced for the magazines with their specific requirements of word length and style of writing. I wanted to write more than anything else in the world, wanted to learn the job thoroughly, but at the same time I needed the stimulus of seeing my efforts appreciated by others, and to know that it was a foothold where I could start moving up to another step.

Here's the way it came about. I was in the city library, looking for something to read. There was a shelf of books in that library which I had ignored for a total of sixteen years, excepting one quick and painful research job while I was in high school.

This shelf of books was West Virginia history; the history of Greenbrier County, Wetzel County, Doddridge, Barbour, Webster—fifty-five counties in which people had lived, hated, dreamed, hoped, loved, fought, died, given birth to those who in turn gave birth.

You don't like to read history? You will. You're going to find it the most fascinating reading there is—the pages will fairly glow with warm life. If you hold down a daytime job as I do, and you do your writing nights and days off, you're going to have only one trouble from now on: how to find time to write the feature stories which the newspapers in your state are going to demand at the rate of one a week. You're going to get the most valuable training a writer could wish for.

I hadn't read more than three pages until I came across a couple of sentences which said that Joseph Debar, a French immigrant who settled in Doddridge County, was a fellow voyager with—Charles Dickens! . . .

There are literally hundreds of equally interesting facts in these histories of West Virginia counties. A man named Rackum Thompson found a seedling apple tree. He was a footloose fella, always moving to where he imagined there was better land than where he was, but each time he moved he would dig up this tree and take it with him. It grew to the point where a sled was required for moving it about, then later it could be moved only by oxcart. He finally had to leave it behind when it was too firmly implanted and could no longer be dug up without killing the roots. But when he was an old man, Rackum Thompson made a pilgrimage to his tree. He actually made many trips to see it, but I wrote of one pilgrimage.

I went downtown to the local printer, showed him one of the stories and asked how much he would charge for the printing of one hundred and seventy copies of it. He looked it over. "Tell you what," he said, "I'd like to read this story, first. I've got a new suburban weekly ad paper I'm going to put out and I may be able to run your stories in it. If I decide to use them, I'll give you a lower price on the printing providing you will let me run one story each week, free of charge."

He read the story and liked it, said he could use them in his paper. He printed the one hundred seventy copies for three dollars. They were on the best bond paper with the title of the series, "Stories of West Virginians," and the title of the story underneath it and my name under the subtitle, the three lines being set off in a block above the story. I read the first printed copy of my stories with unbelief. How much better they appeared in print on good paper!

The biggest job was the addressing and mailing of one hundred and sixty-seven envelopes with each story folded neatly and enclosed with a form letter, stating that this was the first of a series of stories based on West Virginia history, and that the story was for sale for two dollars. I had secured applications for a copyright on each story from the Copyright Office, Library of Congress, Washington. The cost of registering this copyright is two dollars per story.

Stamps cost me five dollars per story. Ordinary white envelopes cost me a dollar for one hundred seventy of them. The time required to address those one hundred and sixty-seven envelopes with the return address, to fold the stories and form letters and enclose them, sealing the envelopes was ten hours.

I had three bundles of letters under my arm when I went to work. After I mailed them, I got the second story printed and ready, waited seven days before sending it.

I waited for the reaction of West Virginia's newspaper editors, in the meantime continuing to write more stories, keeping the length of them as short as possible. I strived for feature stories of three hundred to five hundred words. They are not short stories in the technical sense. They are more or less anecdotes with action and dialogue, but I try for surprise endings with each one.

A week went by; two weeks went by, and no replies from the editors. I waited seven days, deciding that if they saw these stories coming in on regular schedules, it would be better than sending two or three at once with an indefinite period of time between mailings. By the end of the second week I began to get worried. I had invested a total of twenty-one dollars in those first two stories. I decided to risk six stories, investing about sixty-four dollars in them, and if the project wouldn't pay its way, I would have to cease hostilities.

It was a very pretty, long white envelope, that first one. It had printed in the upper left-hand corner, "Kanawha Valley Leader, Nitro, West Virginia." Inside was "a check for two dollars and a nice letter. . . . "Please mail us your copy in time to reach us not later than Monday of each week, as we are now advertising the fact that we are now running stories on West Virginia residents. . . . Please bill us so that we can send your check by the tenth of the month. . . ." It was sweet music, that first acceptance.

Then a check arrived from a Grafton paper, and that afternoon, another, and the next day a letter from a newspaper in Charleston, asking me to send all my stories in the future, and so it went until the demand by newspaper editors was driving me frantic. Not that I had no stories to write, but I was pressed for time to get them written, addressed after printing, and mailed.

It was wonderful to be frantic!

Just start reading the first history of a county in your state that you come across in the library. Before you have read five pages your imagination will turn over, go into high gear, and roll away on a story that will often have its basis on one sentence in the history of that county you are reading about.

Some of these buy only fiction, others feature articles; and it is much easier to sell these magazine editors photographs, fiction, human interest stories, and jokes than it is to sell to the national monthlies. Articles should be of interest to the readers in that state. It would be very difficult to sell a Los Angeles paper a story on a Massachusetts' hobbyist, no matter how interesting that hobby story might be.

Stories of interest to many readers with no state locale may be sold to many Sunday magazines, but do put the same release date on each one and do not send out your article to more than one Sunday magazine in a state. Write that you are sending the story to more than one magazine. This is how many a writer started syndicating his own material.

It is often wise to query the Sunday editor if the article you propose to write will take a great deal of time. Very often he will send a photographer with you if your story interests him. If you not only write, but are a photographer as well, you have a good chance of making these weeklies.

Rates vary with the different magazines and run all the way from a cent a word up to three hundred dollars an article.