"Well, let me see what I can do." I took a survey of all the major 

 magazines and all the regional magazines every magazine I could get 

 information on. And I found out that THE AMERICAN HUNTER was 

 right about in the middle. I'm not going to discuss what the big three 

 were paying because it fluctuates with individuals. THE AMERICAN 

 HUNTER is about $300 to $400 for a full-length feature. There are 

 many, many publications lower than THE AMERICAN HUNTER. So I 

 went to the boss and said, "Can we justify giving them more money?" 

 He said, "We're right where we ought to be. We're an association 

 publication. We're not in the same marketplace." So, I couldn't get 

 any more money for the writers and it's set solid by budget anyway. 



Anyway, paper costs have gone up and keep going up. You can't 

 count on what they're going to be three months from now. And you 

 could run blank paper through the presses and you've got 70 percent 

 of your costs of publishing is going on that blank paper. That's a big 

 problem that's not making money available for the writers. But still, 

 you can make some money. One of the fellows that wrote to Bill Brown 

 that Bill pointed out as a bad example of what a free-lancer shouldn't 

 do made $40,000 in his second year as a free-lancer. He's very 

 ambitious but only about one-third of that was for outdoor writing. All 

 the rest was "True-Confession and unrelated fiction but he wants to be 

 an outdoor writer. He realizes he has to supplement his income with 

 something else. Most of the people that I buy from are biologists, 

 guides, wildlife managers or newspaper people who are working full-time 

 somewhere else and are supplementing their incomes with free-lancing. 

 The free-lancing business is a tough, hard business. It's not a 

 40-hour-a-week business. It's a 40-hour-a-day business and you've got 

 to keep on top of it. You've got to be very prolific and keep going. 



I think I'll get a little bit into the skills you need to sell. And 

 they're not in this order. In fact, these are from the least important 

 to the most important. The least important is the ability to write. The 

 most important, or the next most important, is photographic ability. 

 And the most important is the marketing ability. You've got to be a 

 good salesman. When I say writing is the least important, it's still 

 important. You've got to carry the basics of accuracy and all the good 

 writing has to be carried forth or you don't have a chance to sell. As 

 for photographic requirements each magazine has different 

 requirements. We require a photographic package. Space wise, we're 50 

 percent photographs and 50 percent text. We've got to have a least 

 one photograph on each page. So, if you're talking about a four-page 

 feature, you're talking about six or seven usable photographs for our 

 feature package. Many times I'll get 60 photographs from a free-lance 

 submission and there might three usable photographs in that 60, 

 because they have 17 photographs of the guy standing over the dead 

 deer, 17 photographs of him dragging out the dead deer. They have 

 14 photographs of him glassing a canyon, and there will be three or 

 four subjects in all these 60 photographs. This is not uncommon. 



Just to show you how important photographic ability is, I have a 

 friend that in the last ten years has sold one story to a national 



