Letter to H. Bedford-Jones from Wallace R. Bamber

Letter to H. Bedford-Jones from Wallace R. Bamber,
Editor & Publisher of FAR EAST ADVENTURE magazine.

Pulp Publishing Economics:
Letter from Wallace Bamber, Editor & Publisher of
Fiction Publishers, Inc., 25 West 43rd Street, New York,
N.Y., to H. Bedford-Jones.

The Washington-Youree Hotel
Shreveport, Louisiana
May 14 [1930]

Dear Jones :-

This is in addition to air mail letter of yesterday.

One point you brought up I forgot to mention: that is the idea of you writing one whole issue en toto ---- Fine stuff, Jones and one grand idea ---- but do you realize that if such were the case my editorial costs would go way up above even Adventure's. For after all you know, even Adventure would balk at such a move, for you are a pretty high priced writer to fill the pages of a magazine with.

But ---- there is this about it. I am willing to shoot the works on the fourth issue if the sheet shows the slightest signs of life on the stands. My first three issues are pretty well planned right now, according to Hoyle and the number of round U.S. dollars available for use. But, I think your idea would be a knockout myself if we could get down to a price basis which would make it workable. And I wouldn't expect a single issue of the sheet to absorb all the costs. I would spread it over about three issues, for after all the publicity coming from it would work out that way, and it would not be fair to charge all the costs to the single issues in which your stories appeared en toto.

And I would use every single story under your own name. I don't think there would be any advantage in using fake names and have the reader guess the author, for after all he couldn't.

So keep the idea in the back of your head, I will be more than willing to work it out if we can get fairly started with our first three issues. Maybe the idea of you doing a whole issue for FAR EAST would help you with other mag. publishers. In that event your rate could come down a little and the difference be charged to personal advertising, eh what? But at 6 cents a word, it would mean my cost for the sheet would be $6,000 for editorial work alone. That is more than Adventure averages for their whole sheet, word per word rate. And I am not yet in any position to outbid Adventure for any author's product. Let us hope however that the bright day comes.

Adventure and Butterick are not so hot right now in a financial way. Butterick hasn't made any money for so long that they have almost given up trying. They are a big concern and last year paid less than one tenth of one per cent on their capital investment of approximately $15,000,000. And even Argosy with all its glory was on the auction block here a year or so ago ---- the only thing that stopped it from being sold was that Munsey had stated in his will that if it ever was there had to be a clause inserted in the contract of sale guaranteeing that it would always be sold for 10 cents a copy. That clause stopped the sale and Argosy still goes on as is.

My sheet is going to sell for 25 cents. That is the only way I can make it. At that figure I get back 14 1/2 cents for every copy sold, and will break [even] at approximately 42,000 sales[s] out of 100,000 print order. And for every thousand sold above that figure I will net $145.00. So figure the rest out for yourself. ---- Of all the sheets put on the stands last fall, lousy and worse than that, none fell below 25,000 sale. It seems that the yokels buy new sheets just out of curiosity sake alone. THRILLING TALES sold 31,000 copies. LOVE AND WAR went 26,000. EAGLES OF THE AIR sold 45,000. FLIGHT sold 46,000 on the first and [d]ropped to 37,000 on the second. ---- But the point is that most any issue you bring out sells considerable copies on the first appearance, no matter how rotten it is. The only real bust of the fall season last year was LUCKY STORIES which sold only 13,000 out of 100,000 print[ed].

On the other hand the best sheets of recent years were WAR BIRDS which sold almost 90,000 copies on the first issue, and Flying Aces sold 78,000. If I go 35,000 or above with my sheet I will feel satisfied. If it goes 40,000 I will know that I have a gold mine and will start spending the proceeds and preparing to bring the sheet out twice a month.

So much for now

[Signed] Bamber

[Editor's Note: Regrettably, Wallace Bamber's previous and subsequent letters, and HB-J's, are lost to antiquity. But we can surmise from this letter that the scheme that was hatching related to the author writing one complete issue of FAR EAST ADVENTURE STORIES, which Bamber planned to launch in July 1930. The project never materialized, and HB-J did not appear in the magazine's pages until February 1931 with the first of 6 installments of his final John Solomon adventure novel, Gold of Ishmael. The first 3 installments were published on schedule; but after the April issue FAR EAST went into a brief hiatus and did not resume publishing again until July, when it assumed a bi-monthly schedule. However, the next issue after July did not appear until September and the final issue in the magazine's short life appeared in November.

Bamber's Fiction Publishers, Inc., like its competitors, was in dire financial straits due to the fallout of the Great Depression. Bamber's operation shut down; Clayton Magazines soon after; others like Frank A. Munsey Publishing Co., Doubleday and Street & Smith battened down the hatches and saved their fragile empires by discontinuing slow-selling titles and paring the number of pages of such popular magazines as ARGOSY, SHORT STORIES, WESTERN STORIES, etc. That spelled trouble for the writers the magazines depended on. Even the venerable H. Bedford-Jones had problems selling his usual monthly quota and was forced to accept lower rates. Instead of the 6-cents to 10-cents per word he was accustomed to receiving, HB-J's rates dropped to 3-cents a word or less.

During the 1920s his prolixity was bringing in $60,000 a year or better. Now he was back to square one -- starting over again. He wrote Erle Stanley Gardner that the market was so bad he was considering opening a gas station in the desert, and giving up writing for good.]

Copyright 2001-2002 by Peter Ruber.

Posted by ds at February 10, 2003 04:18 PM

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