ciousness of some of his callers and correspondents. Don't attempt
to spring any correspondence school salesmanship on a real editor. Learn
what real salesmanship is, from a real salesman--who may sell bacon, or
steel or motor cars instead of manuscripts. He lives down your street,
perhaps. Have a talk with him. He will tell you of the profits in a
square deal and in knowing your business, and what can be accomplished
by a little faith.

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 type it in
professional form and give it the needed illustrations; then if you
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.

CHAPTER VIII

WHAT THE EDITOR WANTS

Suppose you were the manager of an immense forum, a stadium like the one
in San Diego, California, where with the aid of a glass cage and an
electrical device increasing the intensity of the human voice, it is
possible to reach the ears of a world's record audience of 50,000
persons. What sort of themes would you favor when candidates for a place
on your speaking program asked you what they ought to discuss? "The
Style of Walter Pater?" "The Fourth Dimension?" "Florentine Art of the
Fourteenth Century?" Not likely! You would insist upon simple and homely
themes, of the widest possible appeal.

A parallel case is that of the editor of a magazine of general
circulation. He manages a forum so much larger than the famous stadium
at San Diego that the imagination is put to a strain to picture it. 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 oth