The editor of a magazine of general circulation. On the generally accepted assumption that each sold copy of a popular magazine eventually reaches an average of five persons, there is one forum in the magazine world of America which every week assembles a throng of ten million or more assorted citizens, gathered from everywhere, coast to coast, men and women, young and old, every walk of life. A dozen other periodicals address at least half that number, and the humblest of the widely known magazines reaches a quarter of a million.

Put yourself into the shoes of the manager of one of these forums, and try to understand some of his difficulties.

A dozen times a day the editor of a popular periodical is besieged by contributors to make some sort of answer to the question: “What kind of material are you seeking?”

What else can he reply, in a general way, but “something of wide appeal, to interest our wide circle of readers”?

There are times, of course, when he can speak specifically and with assurance, if all he happens to require at the moment to give proper balance to his table of contents is one or two manuscripts of a definite type. Ordinarily, he stands in constant need of half a dozen varieties of material; but to describe them all in detail to every caller would take more time than he could possibly afford to spare.

He cannot stop to explain to every applicant that among what Robert Louis Stevenson described as “the real deficiencies of social intercourse” is the fact that while two’s company three’s a crowd; that with each addition to this crowd the topics of conversation must broaden in appeal, seeking the greatest common divisor of interests; and that a corollary is the unfortunate fact that the larger the crowd the fewer and more elemental must become the subjects that are possible for discussion.

Every editor knows that a lack of judgment in selecting themes of broad enough appeal to interest a nation-wide public is one of the novice scribbler’s most common failings. It is due chiefly to a lack of imagination on the part of the would-be contributor, who appears to be incapable of projecting himself into the editorial viewpoint. I can testify from my own experience that a single day’s work as an editor, wading through a bushel of mail, taught me more about how to make a selection of subjects than six months of shooting in the dark as a freelancer.

Every editor knows that nine out of ten of the unsolicited manuscripts which he will find piled upon his desk for reading to-morrow morning will prove to be wholly unfitted for the uses of his magazine. The man outside the sanctum fails utterly to understand the editor’s dilemma.

This is the situation which has produced the “staff writer,” and has brought down upon the editor the protests of his more discriminating readers against “standardized fiction” and against sundry uninspired articles produced to measure by faithful hacks. The editor defends his course in printing this sort of material upon the ground that a magazine made up wholly of unsolicited material would be a horrid mélange, far more distressing to the consumer than the present type of popular periodical which is so largely made to order. All editors read unsolicited material hopefully and eagerly. Many an editor gives this duty half of his working day and part of his evenings and Sundays. All of the reward of a discoverer is his if he can herald a new worth-while writer. Moreover, the interest of economy bids him be faithful in the task, for the novice does not demand the high rates of the renowned professional.

Yet even on the largest of our magazines, where the stream of contributions is enormous, the most diligent search is not fruitful of much material that is worth while. The big magazines have to order most of their material in advance, like so much sausage or silk; and much of the contents is planned for many months ahead. Scarcely any dependence can be placed upon the luck of what drifts into the office in the mails.

A surer touch in selecting and handling topics of nation-wide appeal is what counts most heavily in favor of the writer with an established reputation. Often enough it is not his vastly superior craftsmanship. I know of several famous magazine writers who never in their lives have got their material into print in the form in which it originally was submitted. They are what the trade calls “go-getters.” They deliver the “story” as best they can, and a more skillful stylist completes the job.

Success in marketing non-fiction to popular magazines appears to hinge largely upon the quality of the thinking the writer does before he sets pen to paper.

Source:  If You Don’t Write Fiction, by Charles Phelps Cushing

Confidence comes with experience, and when you no longer have any grave fears about your ability to make a living at the trade, your mind turns from elementary problems to the less distracting task of finding out how to make your discovered degree of talent count for all that it may be worth. After trying your hand at a variety of subjects, you will find your forte. But take your time about it. Every adventure in composition teaches you something new about yourself, your art and the markets wherein you gain your daily bread. The way to learn to write–the only way–is by writing, and you never will know what you might do unless you dare and try.

Both as a matter of expediency and of getting as much fun out of the work as possible, it is well in the beginning to be versatile. Eventually, the freelance writer faces two choices: He may become a specialist and put in the remainder of his life writing solely about technology, or about finance, or about the drama. Or he may, as Robert Louis Stevenson did, turn his hand as the mood moves him, to fiction, verse, fables, biography, criticism, drama or journalism–a little of everything. For my own part, I have always had something akin to pity for the fellow who is bound hand and foot to one interest.

I have turned my pen to any honest piece of writing that appealed strongly enough to my fancy–travel, popular science, humor, light verse, editorials, essays, interviews, personality sketches and captions for photographs. Genius takes a short cut to the highroad. But waste not your sympathy on the rest of us, for the byways have their own charm.

While one is finding his footing in the free lance fields, he had best not hold himself above doing any kind of journalistic work that turns an honest dollar. For he becomes richer not only by the dollar, but also by the acquaintances he makes and the valuable experience he gains in turning that dollar. Smile, if you like, but there is no better way to discover what you can do best than to try your ‘prentice hand at a great variety of topics and mediums. The post-graduate course of every school of journalism is a roped arena where you wrestle, catch as catch can, for the honors bestowed by experience.

This experience, painfully acquired, should be backed up by an elementary knowledge of salesmanship. Super-sensitive souls there are who shudder at the mere mention of the word; and why this is so is not difficult to understand–their minds are poisoned with sentimental misapprehensions. Get rid of those misapprehensions just as swiftly as you can. If you have something to sell, be it hardware or a manuscript, common sense should dictate that you learn a little about how to sell it.

There is no dark art to salesmanship; it is simply a matter of delivering the goods in a manner dictated by courtesy, sincerity, common sense and common honesty. Be yourself without pose, and don’t forget that the editor–whether you believe it or not–is just as “human” as you are, and quick to respond to the best that there is in you. Shake off the delusion that you need to play the “good fellow” to him, like the old-fashioned type of drummer in a small town. Simply and sincerely and straight from the shoulder–also briefly, because he is a busy man–state your case, leave your literary goods for inspection and go your way.

If you are temperamentally unfit to sell your own writings, get a competent literary agent to do the job for you. But don’t too quickly despair, for after all, there is nothing particularly subtle about salesmanship. Sincerity, however crude, usually carries conviction. If you know a “story” when you see it, if you write it right and offer it in a common sense manner to a suitable market, you can be trusted to handle your own products as successfully as the best salesman in America–as successfully as Charles Schwab himself. For, above all, remember this: the editor is just as eager to buy good stuff as you are to sell it. Nothing is simpler than to make a sale in the literary market if you have what the editor wants.

Source:  If You Don’t Write Fiction, by Charles Phelps Cushing

Journalists so clumsy that, in the graphic phrase of a short grass poet, “they seem to write with their feet,” sell manuscripts with clock-like regularity to first-class markets. The magazines, like the newspapers, employ “re-write men” to take crude manuscripts to pieces, rebuild them and give them a presentable polish. The matter of prime importance to most of our American editors is an article’s content in the way of vital facts and “human interest.” Upon the matter of style the typical editor appears to take Matthew Arnold’s words quite literally:

“People think that I can teach them style. What stuff it all is! Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.”

No embittered collector of rejection slips will believe me when I declare that the demand for worth-while articles always exceeds the supply in American magazine markets. None the less it is true, as every editor knows to his constant sorrow. The appetite of our hundreds of periodicals for real “stories” never has been satisfied. The menu has to be filled out with a regrettable proportion of bran.

A good style will enhance the manuscript’s value, but want of verbal skill rarely will prove a fatal blemish. Not so long as there are “re-write men” around the shop!

It is not a lack of artistry that administers the most numerous defeats to the novice freelancer. It is a lack of market judgment. When he has completed his manuscript he sits down and hopefully mails it out to the first market that strikes his fancy. He shoots into the dark, trusting to luck.

A huge army of disappointed scribblers have followed that haphazard plan of battle. They paper their walls with rejection slips, fill up a trunk with returned manuscripts and pose before their sympathetic friends as martyrs.

Many of these defeated writers have nose-sense for what is of national interest. They write well, and they take the necessary pains to make their manuscripts presentable in appearance. If they only knew enough to offer their contributions to suitable markets, they soon would be scoring successes.

 When you have completed a manuscript, forget the inspiration that went into its writing and give cold and sober second thought to this matter of marketing. Too many discouraged novices believe that the bromide of the rejection slip–”rejection implies no lack of merit”–is simply a piece of sarcasm. It is nothing of the sort. In tens of thousands of instances it is a solemn fact. Don’t sulk and berate the editors who return your manuscript, but carefully read the contribution again, trying to forget for the moment that it is one of your own precious “brain children.” Cold-bloodedly size it up as something to sell. Then you may perceive that you have been trying to market a crate of eggs at a shoe store. Eggs are none the less precious on that account. Try again-applying this time to a grocer. If he doesn’t buy, it will be because he already has all the eggs on hand that he needs. In that event, look up the addresses of some more grocers.

The same common sense principles apply in selling manuscripts to the magazines and newspapers as in marketing any other kind of produce. The top prices go to the fellow who delivers his goods fresh and in good order to buyers who stand in need of his particular sort of staple. Composing a manuscript may be art, but selling it is business.

Naturally, it requires practice to become expert in picking topics of wide enough appeal to interest the public which reads magazines of national circulation. Every beginner, except an inspired genius, is likely to be oppressed with a sense of hopelessness when he is making his first desperate attempts to “break in.” The writer can testify feelingly on this point from his own experience.

 Source:  If You Don’t Write Fiction, by Charles Phelps Cushing

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us. - W. H. Auden

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it’s always just one person encountering the book, it’s not an audience, it’s one to one. - Paul Auster

The book is your book. You have been responsible for every single thing on every page, every comma, every syllable is your work. - Paul Auster

Some books leave us free and some books make us free. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry. - Gaston Bachelard

Some books are to be tasted; others to be swallowed; and some few to be chewed and digested. - Francis Bacon

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world. - Joseph Joubert

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look out. - Georg C. Lichtenberg

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don’t we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes. - Georg C. Lichtenberg

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read. - Abraham Lincoln

Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings –as some savage tribes determine the power of muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart’s history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. - James Russell Lowell

Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements. - Samuel Johnson

Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader. - Joseph Joubert

This is something that I cannot get over — that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character. - Karl Kraus

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer. - Karl Kraus

I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze. - D. H. Lawrence

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word. - Georg C. Lichtenberg

I think it’s bad to talk about one’s present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension. - Norman Mailer

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous. - W. Somerset Maugham

The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it… I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent. - André Maurois

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk. - Henry Louis Mencken

A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in. - Henry Miller

It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer. - W. Somerset Maugham

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are. - W. Somerset Maugham

If you have a real “story” up your sleeve and know how to word it in passable English, the next thing to learn is the way to prepare a manuscript in professional form for marketing. 

Good form dictates that the first page of your contribution should bear in the upper left hand corner of the sheet your name, upon the first line; the street address, on the second; the town and state, on the third. In the upper right hand corner should be set down an estimate of the number of words contained in the manuscript.

Leave a blank down to the middle of the page. There, in capitals, write the title of the article; then drop down a few lines and type your pen name (if you use one) or whatever version of your signature that you wish to have appear above the article when it comes out in print. Drop down a few more lines before you begin with the text, and indent about an inch for the beginning of each paragraph.  

There are sound reasons for all this. The first is that, likely enough, your title may not altogether suit the editor, and he will require some of the white space in the upper part of the page for a revised version. Also, he will need some space upon which to pencil his directions to the printers about how to set the type.

Double space your lines. If you leave no room between lines, you make it extremely difficult for the editor to write in any corrections in the text. Use good white paper, of ordinary letter size, eight by eleven inches, and leave a margin of about an inch on either side of the text and at both top and bottom. Number each page.

You are doing all this to make the reading of your contribution as easy a task as possible from the purely physical side. You are simply using a little common sense in the process of addressing yourself to the favorable attention of a force of extremely busy persons who are paid to “wade through” a formidable stack of mail.

The danger then lies in a temptation to haste and carelessness.  The opening paragraph of such a manuscript is likely to make a much more exacting demand upon the writer’s skill than the “lead” of a newspaper “story.” All that the newspaper usually demands is that the reporter cram the gist of his facts into the first few sentences. The magazine insists that the first paragraph of a manuscript not only catch attention but also sound the keynote of many words to follow, for the “punch” of the magazine story is more often near the end of the article than the beginning.

Though the technique of newspaper and magazine writing may differ on this matter of the “lead,” do not make the mistake of supposing that the magazine introduction need not be just as chock full of interest as the opening of a newspaper “story.” You are no longer under any compulsion, when you write for the magazines, to cram the meat of the story into the first sentence, but one thing you must do–you must rouse the reader to sit up and listen. You can well afford to spend any amount of effort upon that opening paragraph. Write your lead a dozen times, a hundred times, if necessary, until you make it rivet the attention.

Source: If You Don’t Write Fiction, by Charles Phelps Cushing

An article for a magazine differs chiefly from a newspaper story in that the magazine must make a wider appeal–to a national rather than to a local interest. The successful magazine writer is simply a reporter who knows what the general public likes to read, and who has learned when and where and how to market what he produces. Timeliness is as important as ever, so he must look to his tenses. The magazine article will not appear until from ten days to six months or more after it is accepted. Some of our magazines begin making up their Christmas numbers in July, so he must learn to sweat to the tinkle of sleigh bells.

I wonder how many hundreds of ambitious newspaper reporters are at this very minute urging themselves to extra effort after hours and on their precious holidays and Sundays to test their luck in the magazine markets? The number must be considerable if my experience as a member of the editorial staff of a big national magazine allows me to make a surmise. I have read through bushels of manuscripts that had the ear marks of the newspaper office all over them. They rarely had a title, for the newspaper reporter’s habit is to leave headline writing to a “copy reader.” Most of the manuscripts were done with characteristic newspaper office haste, and gave indication somewhere in the text that the author had not the faintest notion of how far in advance of the date line the magazine had to make up its table of contents.

Many of these novices showed a promise in skill that might give some uneasy moments to our most prosperous magazine headliners. If only there were firm jaws back of the promise! These men had the nose for journalistic success, but that alone will not carry them far unless it is backed with a fighting jaw.

What happened to me in making a beginning as a free lance producer if non-fiction might happen to any one else of an equal amount of inexperience. My home town had no professional magazine writer to whom I could turn for advice; and though I devoured scores of books about writing, they were chiefly concerned either with the newspaper business or with the technique of fiction, and they all failed to get down to brass tacks about my own pressing problem, which was how to write and sell magazine articles. I was not seeking any more ABC advice about newspaper “stories,” nor did I feel the least urge toward producing fiction.

So I had to go out and get my education as a magazine writer in a school of tough experiences. The immediate results of my plunge into free lancing were:

JANUARY - not one cent.

FEBRUARY- I had not yet caught the national viewpoint, nor had I picked up much practical information about the magazine markets.

MARCH -  It was becoming painfully evident that a fledgling freelancer should, if he is wise, depend for a while upon a local newspaper for the larger part of his income.

It wasn’t until late in September that I “landed” a big magazine. Then–the thrill that comes once in a lifetime–I sold an article to a national magazine.  It required tremendous energy to keep up such a pace, but there was sweet comfort in the thought that, technically at least, I was now my own boss. Gradually, I broke away from assignment work until I was free to write what I liked and to go where I pleased.

Source:  If You Don’t Write Fiction, by Charles Phelps Cushing

A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there, that of the pulse, the heart beat. - Henry Miller

A book worth reading is worth buying. - John Ruskin

When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.  - Clifton Fadiman

A good novel tells us the truth about it’s hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.  - Gilbert Keith Chesterton

When the book comes out it may hurt you — but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.  - James Baldwin 

In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest. - Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity. - Thomas Carlyle 

 A room without books is like a body without a soul. - Marcus Tulius Cicero

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books. - Charles Caleb Colton

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us, never cease to instruct, never cloy. - Charles Caleb Colton

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters. - George Eliot

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable. - Raymond Chandler

A good title is the title of a successful book. - Raymond Chandler

The pen is mightier than the sword. - Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Writers are the main landmarks of the past. - Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them. - Samuel Butler

If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain. - Lord Byron

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. - Truman Capote

You who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities and think long and hard on what your powers are equal to and what they are unable to perform. - Horace

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day. - Ernest Hemingway

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we callwhat he writes fiction. - William Faulkner

A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid. - William Faulkner

They can’t yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him. - Ernest Hemingway

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. - Ernest Hemingway

I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can. - Ernest Hemingway

The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it. - Ernest Hemingway

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works. - Virginia Woolf

Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say. - Charles Caleb Colton

To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author. - Charles Caleb Colton

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. - T. S. Eliot

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves. - Clifton Fadiman

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us. - William Faulkner

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home. - Sigmund Freud

He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 

Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 

To write well, express yourself like common people, but think like a wise man. Or, think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do. - Aristotle

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. - W. H. Auden

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream. - Gaston Bachelard

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent. - James Baldwin

It requires more than mere genius to be an author. - Jean de la Bruyère