Ainslee’s Magazine
Ainslee’s publishes yearly a total of approximately a hundred and twenty short stories (from 5,000 to 8,000 words in length), twelve novelettes (from 20,000 to 30,000) and, in monthly installments, about four serials (from 50,000 to 70,000). And, to cull this relatively small amount of fiction, innumerable manuscripts are painstakingly gone over. At a rough estimate, erring on the side of too few rather than too many, ten thousand manuscripts are submitted yearly from various sources for consideration by Ainslee’s Magazine. Of these, eight thousand, I should say, are absolutely unsuited to publication anywhere, while the remaining number are perhaps creditable enough, but have been sent by their authors or the authors’ agents to the wrong magazine—which brings me to the registering of a simple, but curiously disregarded, bit of advice to those whose goal is writing for magazine publication. Study the magazine to which you contemplate submitting material. After all, each issue of a magazine, whatsoever its character, represents the nearest approach to their ideal for the publication, which the editors have been able, at the time to achieve, and should therefore constitute a fairly good working pattern for those whose stuff is to be “aimed at” that magazine. A rejection slip from a given publication is just as apt to mean that the story, albeit distinctive, does not fit the special needs of the magazine as to indicate total unfittedness for publication anywhere.
Ainslee’s Magazine aims to be a high-class, clean, distinctive fiction magazine. It has no room for, nor time for, the frankly salacious, or “sexy.” It is looking always for the proverbial good story, well told. That story may move around any clean, healthy, up-to-date theme, but it should have in it, preferably, woman and love interest. The people of the story should be human, not wooden. They should talk like you and I talk, not like Maria Edgeworth’s people “conversed.” And the tale itself must be colorful. If a story is to have any holding quality whatever, it must transfer its readers to the scene of the action. And to do this, the thing must have in it real atmosphere. Plot basis, then, along with good characterization, atmosphere, and love and woman interest are essentials for the typical Ainslee’s story.
We like to think that stories in Ainslee’s Magazine, though varied in character, are uniformly good. We hesitate, therefore, to talk of “better and best.” But, by way of illustration of the points we have sought to make, we call attention to Marie Van Vorst’s “The Week-End Guest” in the December issue of Ainslee’s—a good story on all counts, and well suited to Ainslee’s.
Helen L. Lieder.
Ainslee’s Magazine.
Street & Smith Corporation,
Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street,
New York City.