[From the New York Times, May 13, 1933.
Copyright 1933 by the New York Times Co.]
PULP WRITERS FIND MARKET DWINDLING
Only 33 magazines Left in Lower-Price Field
--
Word Rate Reduced by Half
BIG OUTPUT THEIR FORTE
Working Methods of the Speedier Authors Described at Meeting of Fiction Guild Here.
Facets about writing for the all-fiction or "pulp paper" magazines and tales of the working habits of some of the world's most prolific writers were told yesterday following the regular Friday meeting of the American Fiction Guild.
The guild, organized eighteen months ago, has a membership of 200 writers, most of the regular contributors to the pulp magazines. The largest chapter is here in New York. Arthur J. Burks is the national president.
Three years ago some seventy-three pulp paper magazine were published. The average rate paid was 2 cents a word and writers whose names had appeared often on covers were paid considerably more. The best rate was 1- cents a word, the minimum about one-half cent. Now there are only about thirty-five such magazines and pay has been cut approximately in half.
There are a few of the regulars who average 100,000 words a month. There are some who maintain "fiction factories," staffs of assistants organized after the manner of the staffs of the elder Dumas and who this have a hand in the production of an even greater total. Others write fast without help. Arthur J. Burks wrote his 80,000-word novel, "Rivers Into Wilderness," published last year by Mohawk and to be reissued this year by Dodd, Mead, in ten days.
Wallace R. Bamber said that Henry Bedford-Jones, one of the best known of the pulp-paper writers, starts work each morning in his home in Hollywood with a repeating phonograph blaring the same record over and over and five stacks of manuscripts on his work table.
He starts writing on one story, keeps at it until he hits an impasse, then shifts to a second. He thus ranges rapidly through his manuscripts, solving a difficult situation only when as much of the fast, smooth going work as possible has been done.
Two of the pulp writers, Albert Richard Wetjen, who also sells many of his stories to the large national weeklies, and Philip Richards, write by the touch system in dark rooms. Why Mr. Richards likes to write in the dark was not known, but Mr. Wetjen once explained that he started writing while living alone in a shack near Salem, Ore. He worked outdoors every day and his only illumination in the shack was a smoky oil lamp. His imagination seems to work best, he said, in semi-darkness.
There is strong competition now in the pulp paper market. Writers accustomed to the higher pay of the "smooth paper" magazines have found decreasing market for the last few years and many have entered the lower price field.
In the pulp market plot must dominate rather than character, and action must be fast and melodramatic. There must be a clear separation of virtue and vice. Romantic interest must be played down, a major reason, it was agreed yesterday, why motion picture companies draw only lightly from the pulp paper field.
The meeting was held in Rosoff's restaurant in West Forty-third Street.
[Note: Wallace R. Bamber quoted above was editor and publisher of Fiction Publishers, Inc., who published FAR EAST ADVENTURE STORIES and other action pulp magazines. You can see a letter by Bamber to writer H. Bedford-Jones elsewhere on The Pulp Rack by clicking here.]
Copyright 2001-2002 by Peter Ruber.
Posted by ds at February 10, 2003 04:23 PM
