American Authors and the Literary Marketplace since 1900

Chapter 6. Thc Magazine Market

Chapter 6 The Magazine Market It's all a question of how much a writcr can stand to cornpromisc. -Elizabeth Nowell to Vardis Fisher (1935) During the 1880s and 189os, modern mass-circulation magazines cane into being in the United States. For the author they provided an important outlet for work and a major source of income. Before 1880, serious authors had only a few respectable magazines in which they could publish -Scvibnev's, Harpev's, the Century, and three or four others. Such n~agazines were usually allied with book publishing firms and addressed a relatively well-educated and genteel audience. They tended, in editorial philosophy, to pattern themselves after such British models as Blackwood 's, the Edinburgh Review,and the Fortnightly. In the 1890s and early 1900s,lio~~~ever, editors and publishers like Frank Munsev, S. S. McClure, John Brisben Walker, Edward Bok, and George Horace Lorimer began to produce mass-circulation magazines for a vast middle-to-lowbrow ~&rican readership that hitherto had not been addressed successfully. Advances in printing technoloa-especially in the reproduction of illustrations -made it possible to manufacture visually attractive magazines in huge printing runs and to price them at fifteen cents or a dime, well within reach of these lieuTaudiences. During this same period, America was malung the final transition from a largely agricultural economy to a predominantly industrial one. Urbanization, growth in average income, better public education, and an increase in leisure time combined to produce a ready audience for magazines that published popular fiction and articles of general interest. During the first half of the twentieth century the American author could publish stories and serialize novels in an unprecedented number and variety of such magazines. The great boom in national retailing and the growing importance of brand names made mass-circulation magazines the ideal advertising medium for American business. Indeed, it was the partnership between advertising and magazines that made possible the enormous growth of the periodical industry in the United States. Magazine publishers could sell 104/ American Authors and the Literarv Marketplace their nlagazines for less than production costs and still take substantial profits fro111 advertising revenues. Magazine publishers thus became interniediaries between specific groups of businessmen and homoge~leous groups of readers. A publisher had to devise an editorial philosophy that would appeal to a parricular body of readers and acquire material to fit that philosophy. Then space had to be sold to ad\,ertisers who wanted to present their products to that segment of the retail market. Almost every magazinc was designed for a well-defined public, large or sniall, within the total population. As a consecluence, the magazine publisher came to be a dealer both in reading matter and in consumer groups. The great success of magazines such as the Saturday even in^ l'ost, Ladies' Home Journal, Redboolz, Muttsey's, Collier's, Woman's Home Companion , the Delineator, Cosmopolitan, McCall's, Liberty, the various McClure publications, and many other magazines opened up high-paying markets for fiction writers and began to make the services of a good literary agent indispensable. Agents became brokers between magazines and authors, guiding writers to editors who could use their work and introducing editors to authors whose writing would fit the needs of their magazines. Not coincidentally, advertising agencies began to spring up in New York and in other publishing centers at about this time. Such agencies facilitated dealings at another "interface": they brought businesses in touch with magazines that would reach their particular markets, helped these businesses with cop\~-\\~riting and layout, and carried out elementary experinlcnts in market analysis.' The inlportant role played bv advertising in the magazine industry had an effect on content. A nlagazine like the Smart Set, which addressed a limited and sophisticated readership, could afforcl to be risquC or contro- ~crsial because it charged a high price per copv and did not court ad~ertising from name-brand national firms. The dra\vback for the author was that the Smaa Set and other magazines of its kind paid Ion, fees-from one hundred to four hundred dollars for a short story and even less for nonfiction. Writers who wanted to publish in mass-circulation magazines and enjoy the financial rewarcls and nide exposure of such publication had to be ready to tailor their kvork for those markets. That usually meant turning out a relatively bland product. Much of the material in mass1 . Theodorc Peterson, ,M@jqazinesin the T111entieth Centtiry, td cd. (Urhana: Universityof Illino~s...