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Fantasite, v. 2, issue 5, whole 11, May-June 1943
Page 12
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12...... THE FANTASITE at the bottom of the page. Furthermore, the last sentence in your story is really only worth about four lines. What to do? Throw in nine lines of subjunctive clause, ending up with either a noun or a verb, or if you overrun your space after all, simply leave out the same. Readers will imagine that it is a composing error--such as continually crop up in our field of publishing. (One of my pet composing errors is accomplished by the numbskull who continues part of page 23 on the inside of the front cover. Whenever confronted with this sort of thing I lay the magazine down and never bother to finish it... unless it is some of my own material.) Another bit of subterfuge along a slightly different line is in the matter of publishing date, or announced frequency of publishing time. We were discussing this problem one night with the editor. Question as to how often his Fantafright came out, he said, "I try to keep it a bi-monthly, but it only comes out about five times a year." An excellent psychological effect, in this case, is to call Fantafright a quarterly. Then Bronson could lean back in his hat with a satisfied grin on his face and say deprecatingly, "Well, you know, Fantasite is only a quarterly, but I usually manage to slip in an extra issue near the end of the year!" (Pouted pigeon effect, please.) All in all the publishing business is one that lends itself well to minor bits of subterfuge. Perhaps that is why I find myself drawn to it. I knew a chap who put out a psuedo-pornograpic magazine once a month for years. Each issue he changed the color of the skin on the demi-nude on the cover, and reversed the plates on the inside, but he never altered the stories. He had in succession on his covers a nude white girl, an Indian, a Chinese, a Malayan, a dark Spaniard, an Indian-Chinese, a mulatto, and a Senegalese. When he at last got back to white again, and was in despair lest he be forced to lay out for a new cover plate, I suggested that he call the second white printing an albino girl. I was thereinafter Assistant Editor. We then had a series of albino-Indians, albino-Chinese, albino-Malayans, albino-Spanish, albino-Indian-Chinese, albino-mulatto, etc. When I suggested that he then go through the same combination, calling them Chinese-albinos, etc., he thought that was fooling the public a bit too much. He purchased a new cover plate and promptly went bankrupt. And lastly a few words on concluding a column. You will note that I am still quite a distance from the bottom of the page, and yet there is no logical excuse for continuing further. I could write to the editor and ask him to throw in a filler, or dig up an old cut about so-many-inches long. However, that would take time and we have a deadline to fill. (No remarks.) Among the numerous methods of concluding the page is the pun, the good-advice, the let's-be-friends slant, in case you have been chastising someone, and the old, ear-worn skullduggery of saying, "Now, in this article I have tried to show you that so-and-so and such-and-such..." and commence to re-state everything previously stated until the bell rings at the bottom of the stencil. (That's a very handy device; you ought to buy one.) However, my favorite method is to end up with an old joke. No matter what people say, they will remember a bad joke long after they have forgotten all the good ones. If they cannot recall the issue of the magazine in which a given story or article appears, they will always explain, "The one with the horrible pun; you know what I mean." Therefore, lest you forget, let me recall this gag: "Who was that woman you were eating with last night?" "That was no woman, that was my knife." ********** ****
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12...... THE FANTASITE at the bottom of the page. Furthermore, the last sentence in your story is really only worth about four lines. What to do? Throw in nine lines of subjunctive clause, ending up with either a noun or a verb, or if you overrun your space after all, simply leave out the same. Readers will imagine that it is a composing error--such as continually crop up in our field of publishing. (One of my pet composing errors is accomplished by the numbskull who continues part of page 23 on the inside of the front cover. Whenever confronted with this sort of thing I lay the magazine down and never bother to finish it... unless it is some of my own material.) Another bit of subterfuge along a slightly different line is in the matter of publishing date, or announced frequency of publishing time. We were discussing this problem one night with the editor. Question as to how often his Fantafright came out, he said, "I try to keep it a bi-monthly, but it only comes out about five times a year." An excellent psychological effect, in this case, is to call Fantafright a quarterly. Then Bronson could lean back in his hat with a satisfied grin on his face and say deprecatingly, "Well, you know, Fantasite is only a quarterly, but I usually manage to slip in an extra issue near the end of the year!" (Pouted pigeon effect, please.) All in all the publishing business is one that lends itself well to minor bits of subterfuge. Perhaps that is why I find myself drawn to it. I knew a chap who put out a psuedo-pornograpic magazine once a month for years. Each issue he changed the color of the skin on the demi-nude on the cover, and reversed the plates on the inside, but he never altered the stories. He had in succession on his covers a nude white girl, an Indian, a Chinese, a Malayan, a dark Spaniard, an Indian-Chinese, a mulatto, and a Senegalese. When he at last got back to white again, and was in despair lest he be forced to lay out for a new cover plate, I suggested that he call the second white printing an albino girl. I was thereinafter Assistant Editor. We then had a series of albino-Indians, albino-Chinese, albino-Malayans, albino-Spanish, albino-Indian-Chinese, albino-mulatto, etc. When I suggested that he then go through the same combination, calling them Chinese-albinos, etc., he thought that was fooling the public a bit too much. He purchased a new cover plate and promptly went bankrupt. And lastly a few words on concluding a column. You will note that I am still quite a distance from the bottom of the page, and yet there is no logical excuse for continuing further. I could write to the editor and ask him to throw in a filler, or dig up an old cut about so-many-inches long. However, that would take time and we have a deadline to fill. (No remarks.) Among the numerous methods of concluding the page is the pun, the good-advice, the let's-be-friends slant, in case you have been chastising someone, and the old, ear-worn skullduggery of saying, "Now, in this article I have tried to show you that so-and-so and such-and-such..." and commence to re-state everything previously stated until the bell rings at the bottom of the stencil. (That's a very handy device; you ought to buy one.) However, my favorite method is to end up with an old joke. No matter what people say, they will remember a bad joke long after they have forgotten all the good ones. If they cannot recall the issue of the magazine in which a given story or article appears, they will always explain, "The one with the horrible pun; you know what I mean." Therefore, lest you forget, let me recall this gag: "Who was that woman you were eating with last night?" "That was no woman, that was my knife." ********** ****
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