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CHAPTER LXV 337 be paid a few dollars less than you expect. On the other hand you may be willing to drop five or ten dollars from your stated price to make a sale and may lose a sale through the fact that your price is too high. There is also a chance that you will be paid twenty-five dollars, your asking price, for a story a company would .be quite willing to pay fifty for. In the long run it is probable that you will do better by not pricing your scripts until you reach that point where your work is in such a demand that you can raise your prices well above the usual rates. 43. Do not auction off your script. Practical men are unable to fathom the debased mentality that can evolve such a letter as this: Union Film Co., New York City. Dear sirs: I inclose my latest and best story, "In the Knick of Time." This will make one of the Finest Storys ever shown. I have sent copies to the Stinger, The Jake, the Smith, the Cracker and the Contrast. The best offer received by me by October first will take the script. You will not be permitted to make a second bid after that, so name your Highest Price now. Respectfully, A. I. DIOT. No one wants the sort of script that such an ass will write, and it would merely serve to entertain the Editor for a moment were it not that the constant recurrence of this idiotic scheme is one of the points that confirm manufacturers and Editors in their adherence to the staff writer. It hurts the innocent and helps to retard the ad- vance of the free lance in general. 44. Do not send out the carbon of your script and do not send out two or more ribbon copies at the same time. If two companies accept the same script and you have to explain to one that you have sold to the other, you will presently be unable to make any sales at all. A company may send you a release slip and put the story in work. If two companies do this, one must sustain a loss. They are supposing that you know the ethics of your business and are trusting to your intelligence. The carbon copy sent is always suggestive of this procedure, and will be ignored. If your original is lost, copy your carbon that you may have a ribbon copy to send. A ribbon copy is nothing more than a copy made with a typewriter ribbon and not with carbon paper. 45. When you have arrived at a proper point of progress and feel that you are doing worth while stories, make a careful survey of the field. Study the style of the various companies and decide upon those making a specialty of stories of the general type you write, or select those with which you prefer to do business. Make not only a first, but a second and third and perhaps a fourth and fifth choice. Send only your very best stuff to this selected list, starting with the first. If it comes .back from there send to the next and so on. If you exhaust the list, send to other companies, but concentrate your efforts on the top names. It may be months before you get even a