Writing the photoplay is essentially an art; marketing the photoplay script is a business; and the sooner the writer adopts intelligent, up-to-date business methods in offering his stories, the sooner he is likely to find the checks coming in.  It is not enough merely to send out your script; it must be sent to that editor who is in the market for the kind of script you have written.  As one editor has said, “Don’t send a Biblical photoplay to a firm that makes a specialty of Indian and cowboy subjects.”

Your first care, then, should be to have as complete a knowledge as possible of what every company is doing, what kinds of stories they need at the time, where their field-companies are working, and, above all, what kinds of scripts certain companies positively do not want at any time.  For of course, there are companies with definitely fixed policies, besides concerns that announce from time to time that they are unable to use stories of this or that sort.

The most important aids to a thorough knowledge of the photoplay market are the different moving-picture trade-journals and the magazines published exclusively for writers.[61] By studying them you will equip yourself with a first-hand knowledge of what the different studio editors need, and so be on the right road.  Don’t take a gambler’s chance by sending out your scripts without knowing precisely what is a good prospect.

[Footnote 61:  See Chapter XIV.]

In almost every one of the foregoing chapters we have raised points that bear upon the selling of your story as well as affect the particular part of the script then being discussed.  To repeat one instance, you were advised not only to satisfy yourself that a company is in the market for society stories, but to look into the nature of the stock-company producing their plays.  If the company you select is one that features a woman in most of its picture-stories, and yours is a photoplay with a strong male lead, you would be unwise to submit it there.  True, it might be accepted and one of the studio writers commissioned to rewrite it in order to give the “fat” part to the leading woman, but your check would be proportionately smaller to compensate for the rewriting—­you would, in fact, be paid little more than if you had sold the bare idea.

In submitting your script to a given company, do not address it to individuals, unless there is a very good reason for so doing—­and there seldom is.  Address your letter either to the “Editor, Blank Film Company,” or to the “Manuscript Department.”  Most useless of all is the practice of sending to some person who is known to be associated with a certain company, without knowing just what his position is.

Once the photoplaywright has begun to sell his scripts, he will usually prefer to do his own marketing.  If, he argues, he is able to write salable photoplays, why should he share his checks with authors’ agents or photoplay clearing houses?  Yet many writers find an agency to be advantageous.  But you had better take the advice of an experienced friend before committing your work to an intermediary—­not all are capable and not all are honest.