Monday, April 11, 2005
Selling us on salesmanship in print
The first section is brilliant in its own way.
At 116 pages, it's much longer than any of the
subsequent sections.
It does a great job of both selling the
profession of direct mail copywriter, the
opportunity to make 6 figures (and multiples
thereof) as a direct mail copywriter -- and
starts to weed out those who think it can
happen without some study and hard work.
One section compares the pay DM copywriters
make to other kinds of writers such as
reporters, technical writers and fiction
writers.
To the best of my knowledge, this section
is fairly accurate -- and when evaluating
how much fiction writers make, it's
actually TOO POSITIVE.
That is, they give an example of a fiction
magazine's (very) low rates for short stories,
then compare them to what you could make
writing DM salesletters. In the process, they
assume you even COULD write and have accepted
for publication a large number of short stories.
In practice, one writer being the author of
large numbers of stories in one magazine has
not happened since the late 1950s when Robert
Silverberg could write enough short stores to
fill entire issues of magazines. And even then,
that was not common.
It also happened in the pulp fiction era, before
TV satisfied the need of America for story and
drama, when large numbers of pulp magazines
filled the newstands across America.
Love pulps, adventure pulps, science fiction pulps,
war stories, western stories, true confessions,
detective stories -- modern Americans would be
amazed at the volume and range of short fiction
widely available in those days.
And many writers in those days wrote and published
huge amounts of stories and novels. Still, it was
relatively unusual for one magazine to carry just
one writer. The authors churning out huge volumes
wrote for many different magazines.
Lester Dent wrote a short novel for DOC SAVAGE
every month for many years, but magazine also
published short stories about Doc Savage by
other authors.
And Lester Dent also sold many other stories and
novels to other magazines.
Typical pay for writers in those days -- 1 cent
a word.
Sounds pretty terrible, until you remember that
that's probably the equivalent of 10 - 20 cents
now.
And few magazines pay that much.
It's now impossible for fiction writers to make
a living the way the pulp guys did in 1930s and
1940s. There are not enough magazines and they
do not pay enough money.
Of course, there is a huge market of original
paperback books which did not exist in those
days -- but the quantity is limited.
That is, a publisher will not want to put out
more than one book at a time by the same author.
Of course, many successful authors have large
numbers of books in print -- but only one
current bestseller at a time.
Some authors do publish books under different
names (just as some pulp writers did in older
days), but this is counterproductive in the long
run because the success of a pen name is not
associated with your real name.
At 116 pages, it's much longer than any of the
subsequent sections.
It does a great job of both selling the
profession of direct mail copywriter, the
opportunity to make 6 figures (and multiples
thereof) as a direct mail copywriter -- and
starts to weed out those who think it can
happen without some study and hard work.
One section compares the pay DM copywriters
make to other kinds of writers such as
reporters, technical writers and fiction
writers.
To the best of my knowledge, this section
is fairly accurate -- and when evaluating
how much fiction writers make, it's
actually TOO POSITIVE.
That is, they give an example of a fiction
magazine's (very) low rates for short stories,
then compare them to what you could make
writing DM salesletters. In the process, they
assume you even COULD write and have accepted
for publication a large number of short stories.
In practice, one writer being the author of
large numbers of stories in one magazine has
not happened since the late 1950s when Robert
Silverberg could write enough short stores to
fill entire issues of magazines. And even then,
that was not common.
It also happened in the pulp fiction era, before
TV satisfied the need of America for story and
drama, when large numbers of pulp magazines
filled the newstands across America.
Love pulps, adventure pulps, science fiction pulps,
war stories, western stories, true confessions,
detective stories -- modern Americans would be
amazed at the volume and range of short fiction
widely available in those days.
And many writers in those days wrote and published
huge amounts of stories and novels. Still, it was
relatively unusual for one magazine to carry just
one writer. The authors churning out huge volumes
wrote for many different magazines.
Lester Dent wrote a short novel for DOC SAVAGE
every month for many years, but magazine also
published short stories about Doc Savage by
other authors.
And Lester Dent also sold many other stories and
novels to other magazines.
Typical pay for writers in those days -- 1 cent
a word.
Sounds pretty terrible, until you remember that
that's probably the equivalent of 10 - 20 cents
now.
And few magazines pay that much.
It's now impossible for fiction writers to make
a living the way the pulp guys did in 1930s and
1940s. There are not enough magazines and they
do not pay enough money.
Of course, there is a huge market of original
paperback books which did not exist in those
days -- but the quantity is limited.
That is, a publisher will not want to put out
more than one book at a time by the same author.
Of course, many successful authors have large
numbers of books in print -- but only one
current bestseller at a time.
Some authors do publish books under different
names (just as some pulp writers did in older
days), but this is counterproductive in the long
run because the success of a pen name is not
associated with your real name.
