the average writer cannot read stage material as it should be read, or else it is very dangerous to the listener’s judgment.  Many a producer has been tricked into producing an act whose merits a masterly reader has brought out so finely that its fatal faults were forgotten.  And so the producer prefers to read a manuscript himself.  Alone in his office he can concentrate on the act in hand, and give to it the benefit of his best judgment.

(c) Offering a manuscript by mail is perfectly safe.  There has never come to my knowledge one clearly proved instance of where a producer has “stolen an idea.”

(d) Send your manuscript by registered mail and demand a return receipt.  Thus you will save losses in the mail and hold a check against the loss of your manuscript in the producer’s office.  And when you send your manuscript by mail, invariably enclose stamps to pay the return to you by registered delivery.  Better still, enclose a self-addressed envelope with enough postage affixed to insure both return and registry.

(e) Three weeks for consideration is about the usual time the average producer requires to read a manuscript at his leisure.  In times when a producer is actively engaged in putting on an act, he may not have an hour in the week he can call his own.  Therefore have patience, and if you do not receive a reply from him in three weeks, write again and courteously remind him that you would like to have his decision at his earliest convenience.  Impatient letters can only harm your chance.

5.  Hints on Prices for Various Acts

What money can be made by writing vaudeville material?  This is certainly the most interesting question the writer for vaudeville can ask.  Like the prices of diamonds, the prices of vaudeville acts depend on quality.  Every individual act, and each kind of act, commands its own special price.  There are two big questions involved in the pricing of every vaudeville manuscript.  First, of what value is the act itself?  Second, what can the performer or the producer afford to payor be made to pay for the act?

The first question cannot be answered for even a class of acts.  The value of each individual act determines its own price.  And even here there enters the element inherent in all stage material—­ a doubt of value until performance before an audience proves the worth of the act.  For this reason, it is customary for the purchaser of a vaudeville act to require that it first make good, before he pays for it.  “Try and then buy,” is the average vaudevillian’s motto.  If you are a good business man you will secure an advance against royalty of just as much as you can make the producer “give up.”  Precisely as in every other business, the price of service depends upon the individual’s ability to “make a deal.”

The answer to the second question likewise depends upon the vaudeville writer’s individual ability as a business man.  No hints can be given you other than those that you may glean from a consideration of average and record prices in the following paragraphs.