directions for the workshop end of the busi

ness.

Instead of generalizing about advertising, I would say to writers, show some of the advertisements merchants have actually used, and why they are good or bad. If you don't know enough about advertising to do so, don't try to write upon the subject at all.

Instead of saying some wordy nothings about selling, tell of the unusual selling plans that have really proved their value giving in detail how they were carried out and with what results. If you name the merchant and the city so much the better, as a rule.

Similarly, if your subject is business-letter writing, your chances of acceptance will be increased if you show, as well as tell, how a good letter should be written; and if you are writing upon profits and business records, give specific directions for figuring the one and send along a sample record form that may be used to illustrate and explain the other.

Where can such material be found? Unless you live in the middle of a prairie, it is all around, whichever way you turn. There is hardly a store, an office, a manufacturing or distributing plant that has n't a story of its own to tell, if you know how to go after it and get it.

Make friends of men in as many different

lines as possible. Tell them what you are doing and what you want. Don't be afraid to ask questions. And photograph as you go. A sharp photograph of a novel advertising sign, a well-trimmed window, a smart delivery van, of some time- or labor-saving device in the workshop or of an unusual detail of store arrangement—almost any number of such "snaps may be sold as separate photo-paragraphs or grouped into larger illustrated articles. The merchant himself may see nothing unusual in any of these things. It is up to you to "see" them, to dig them up, to be sure you miss no essential details ; but handle such material to good advantage when you get it, and the merchant will be just as glad to see it in print as the editor of a good journal will be to get it and print it. You may make good friends of both at the same time.

One final word: Be sure of your facts. If you don't know, find out; if you don't understand, make no attempt to explain. Scrupulous accuracy is one of the first essentials of successful writing for trade and technical journals; and the editors of such journals usually know their own field well and will give but little consideration to any writer who is found to be careless in this particular. OAK PARK, Ill. Francis R. Bentley.

The Cosmopolitan wants the world's best writers' best stories. This does not necessarily mean "the world's best-known writers." I have a pretty strong feeling that some of our best writers of today never have been heard of, except in their own communities. I should like to do everything in my power I know of no to encourage the newcomers. greater encouragement, however, than the showing we are making on the Cosmopolitan's contents page each month; you are beginning to find new names on it.

I believe THE WRITER Would do a great service to literature by continually pounding

away at this fact that instead of scorning the new writer, the editor would give his right arm to find one. We need new writers badly. Furthermore, we need some new note in fiction. I should not be surprised to find we need to return to the old romantic school. We have been trying to amuse ourselves with realism for a long time; and we have found that other things besides suicide, murder, and the eternal triangle are entertaining.

We all want something big and wholesome. We want writers who will write because they love to write, because they can't help writing - and writers who will forget, for the time

being, that there is such a thing as a motion picture. So many have carried the film idea too far, and you will find, strangely enough, that the people who are not trying to write both for the magazines and the screen are the people who are doing the best work for both and that those who are deliberately sitting down to hammer a magazine story into a motion-picture plot because it is a motion-picture plot are the ones who are going into oblivion.

Not only are we out to get new writers,

but we are working with them on every story that has the germ of an idea that pleases us. We believe that the editor is a mighty factor in the newer literary game; that he has to be what is, more or less, a collaborator with the writer. It is not such a hard job to go out and pay more money than any one else and thus corral the greater part of the best writers. The real job is to help the world's best writers to write better than they ever wrote before. Verne Hardin Porter.

NEW YORK, N. Y.

Ministers have furnished a larger per cent. of writers in proportion to their number than any other calling or profession of men. Some enter the editorial field entirely and others write books. Still others enjoy free-lance work at odd moments.

It would help many other ministers serving small congregations to keep from growing rusty if they would use their spare time for side-line writing for magazines. It would quicken them intellectually, inspire them to better service, increase their audience and awaken them to renewed interest in life if they would take up writing at spare moments.

Being a minister, I find much difference between preaching a sermon to the people of a congregation who take what I give them because I am their minister and submitting an article to some editor at "Usual Rates" and getting a rejection slip because I did not measure up.

It is this grindstone of side-line writing which keeps my axe sharpened. The versewriting develops my power in poetic imagination, which helps me in my preaching. The general audience broadens thinking. The critical editor makes me careful. The large circulation makes my greater audience. The varied conditions of life among readers and publishers increases versatility.

No, side-line writing can never be a substitute for preaching, but it can be a mighty

help. It can keep me mentally alert, spiritually active, keen in discernment, generally useful, broad in sympathy, and confident of victory if my acceptances exceed my rejections.

In the mean time the minister has many opportunities to get subject matter which he can turn into cash in a few minutes with a typewriter. Even if the checks are small, they are extras, and their average exceeds the average wedding fee. From every point of view, writing is a side-line which has profit without loss for ministers.

Writing for Sunday School publications may not be the most remunerative writing, but it has attractive features for those who are suited for it. Matter written for the general Sunday School publications finds a large market. The articles which do not get acceptance at one place will likely find it elsewhere if not entirely unsuited for publication.

To be successful in this work, one needs large experience in Sunday School and church work, fair average ability to write, and something to say. The publishers are kind and considerate, and the pay generally ranges from a half-cent to a cent a word.

The publication boards of the various denominations are looking for new ideas, methods in work, and suggestive plans, not unlike the "how to do" paragraphs in the home magazines. Unless one is well versed, or on the

staff of writers, it is wise to leave all denominational matters for the staff.

The long article is no longer in demand. Discussions are hard to sell. The article with fewer than three hundred words meets with more favor than one with more. A good live subject handled in a live way is wanted. Suggest something that is live and workable. Quit when you are through.

Writing for church papers pays so little that few writers who can land elsewhere will devote much time to it. By the church papers, I mean the weekly publications of the various denominations. Nearly all of them have their material furnished free by ministers and church workers. Even when they pay for articles, the price is so small that the writer feels the need of looking for more remunera tive markets. Of course, the larger field occupied by the leading non-sectarian publications like the Christian Herald, the Christian Endeavor World, and other similar papers enables them to pay fairly well, for church publications; but I have found that the household journals pay far better, buy much more, and generally furnish a much more profitable market than the denominational weeklies.

Writing for the homiletical magazines must be left almost entirely for those who have been technically trained to be ministers, and evangelists, and church workers. With such magazines, the methods department is the best buyer. It is always on the lookout for good new ideas to raise money, conduct compaigns or revivals, build churches, maintain choirs, or Sunday schools, and carry on every form of church work. Reports of the latest success told in a few words are always in demand provided the idea is new.

As in writing for Sunday School publications, not only is it wise to be non-sectarian in the writing, but many of the magazines demand it. I have been writing for one for a dozen years and on its staff for ten years and do not even know to what denomination the editor belongs. This magazine insists on articles that will appeal to Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and all denominations alike. An advantage in writing for such a publication is the ability to sell rejected materia! elsewhere.

The advertising news article of veiled suggestion, which will advertise and increase the business of a publication's side lines, or friends or patrons, is almost sure to sell, if it is well prepared. To illustrate: I recently came across a Sunday school which has distributed nearly fifteen hundred books in two years. Its method was one which if generally adopted would be likely to bring about the sale of thousands of books by the publishing boards of the various denominations. Every feature of it seemed new to me material for a worth-while story, full of life. I wrote it up, in fewer than six hundred words. An ordinary Sunday School publication would have paid about three dollars for the article. Instead of offering it to one editor alone, I had thirty copies made and offered the article, syndicated, to as many Sunday School publications at two dollars each. While all could not use the article, many did, and my returns were several times as much as they would ordinarily have been.

I have found general free-lance writing most satisfactory. It furnishes diversion, awakens interest, gives inspiration, and adds to pin money. By general writing, I mean the special article which ought have life and interest for a year and general use in a dozen or more magazines. The matter may deal with church work, Sunday School work, home finances, reform work, sociology, public health, uplift work, any one of a hundred ideas.

I suppose such an article should be called the Special General Article. The main idea is to have another chance to sell if the magazine for which it is prepared does not want it. I got the idea from a buyer of Gospel songs, who kept insisting on Generally Useful Songs

songs that can be used anywhere and at all times and have real value.

With the high cost of living and the profiteer getting the headline space in nearly all publications, the article that deals with money is in demand. Money stories now are especially popular. People are thinking cost, profit, loss, gain, buying, selling, futures, and all their kindred associations.

The special article on money for general use must have facts. It must be mathematically correct in its deductions. The money

article appeals to business-minded people and must stand investigation.

The general free-lance writer who is in touch with the money spirit today can find opportunity to turn his information into cash in many ways. Little household articles on economy, little helps to profit, little ways to a bank account, money and matrimony, money and business, money and farming, money and health, the high cost of sickness, the high cost of weddings, and a thousand other subjects associated with money can be sold.

Writing for prize contests has the disadvantage that the time, labor, and material are lost if one does not win. This is specially true of the stipulated conditions which make long articles or books conform to certain regulations that make them suited for other uses.

On the other hand some of the contests afford fine opportunities to pick up a few extra dollars for a few minutes' work and get much free advertising. The author of America's Creed got a thousand dollars and ten times that much value in glory and satisfaction from having served his country for a comparatively short time of work. I have twice received fifty-dollar checks for less than five minutes' work the idea won the prize from publications I had never seen. How many thousands missed the prize I am not sure, but several thousand did in one case, for it was a nation-wide contest conducted by one of the largest circulated publications in the world. On the whole I have been fortunate, and yet I never devote a day's work to any contest unless I can so plan that the product will be of value for use elsewhere if I fail to win. I lost in the contest for a state song, but my work sold elsewhere. I lost in a contest for a suffrage hymn but what I wrote was easily placed. In both cases I played safe. My writing had general value.

Another value of prize-contest writing is the experience, which may suggest a dozen live articles which would not otherwise be produced. Experience, knowledge, facts, information, ideas, and ability to express them in a way that will profit or entertain others

this store of information is stock in trade. One of our successful writers of Gospel songs taught me a lesson several years ago. At that time he had on hand several hundred manuscripts and was increasing stock. He remarked "The extra rent to house them was small, and some one might want them some day." Since then his work has become popular, and some one has wanted them and has paid for them.

That brings me to the matter of stock kept on hand by writers on certain subjects. If one writes the generally useful article of permanent value, it becomes almost as standard stock as sugar in a grocery store. Of course such articles must be such as will be of actual value, real service, and they may be generally adapted to many publications. Such productions are Gospel songs, secular songs, humor, satire, historical sketches, biographical sketches, ideas that inspire, helpful ideas for day school and Sunday School publications, and articles dealing with economics in home and national life. Not being a literary star to rise high for the admiration of the entire world, I find splendid diversion and some pay in stocking up on such articles when I have some spare hours. A Sunday School idea, if a good one, is in demand with a dozen publications. If it comes back from one, another may accept it. If it remains unsold this year, it may gɔ next year. Sometimes a special request comes for a special lot, and then I turn to my stored-up supply. The same is true of other articles on other lines of general value.

Of course, one must be careful to avoid subjects that soon get out of date. Likewise those of only local interest and value are not suitable for general stock. On the whole, I find this idea of increasing stock on hand of paragraphs and special articles of real value to be a very profitable one for the writer with only small ability as well as for the one with larger ability. Perhaps the most valuable feature is that if the writer ever becomes generally popular the entire stock worth printing will sell.

THE WRITER is published the first of every month. It will be sent, postpaid, for $1.50 a year. The price of Canadian and foreign subscriptions is $1.62, including postage.

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THE WRITER PUBLISHING CO.,
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office of the Associated Press for real heartinterest stories rather than those of the "crime or short skirts" variety? The appeal as it came over the wires, said: "Wonder if somebody in this state could flash us a story today that is not crime or skirts. Just a simple, old-fashioned tale of love and sweetness and devotion — perhaps of mother love. Would it not be a dandy relief? I haven't seen such a yarn for many a day. Thanks." The simple, affecting short story, dealing with the verities of human life, devoid of the flashy appeal of sexuality and crime, is seldom found between magazine covers nowadays, and there are countless readers, weary of the cheapness and vulgarity of the typical modern short story, who would welcome it.

It seems to be a new fashion to print books with the leaves uncut at the bottom, instead of at the top in the old way. The easiest way to cut the leaves of such a book is to turn the book upside down and use the paper knife beginning at the back of the book, instead of at the front. It is an advantage to have the upper edges of the leaves trimmed evenly, instead of left rough by the paper knife, so that if a book is to be sent out uncut the new fashion has something to recommend it.

Justified complaint is made by Howard V. Sutherland, writing to the New York Times, about supergirls in fiction. "In the popularpriced magazines," Mr. Sutherland says, “for the past year the literary wolf pack has been hunting the supergirl. It is impossible to pick up a magazine of the kind referred to in which a marvelous specimen of supergirlhood does not perform the prodigious and, that without batting an eyelid. Physically, mentally, morally, pulchritudinously, financially, her like has never been known before. Either she twists the neck of a fire-breathing bull and flings a husky Colorado Sheriff over her shoulder and, although a criminal, becomes his cherished wife; or, having had a week's experience in the Kalamazoo Mammoth Emporium, she deigns to enter a New York department store and in three weeks becomes Superintendent, finally marrying the middle-aged proprietor. She has been known,