(c) Should you receive a favorable reply to your request for an appointment, you may be reasonably sure that your prospective purchaser at least needs a new act. In meeting your appointment, be on time, and have someone with you. A woman, of course, would have a chaperon, precisely as she would if she were meeting any other stranger. And a man might care to have someone to engage the attention of the performer's companion and leave him an uninterrupted opportunity to talk business.
(d) Ask for an immediate reading of your manuscript, or at least request it read the next day, when you can be present while he is reading it. Do not leave a manuscript to be returned to you by mail. Vaudeville performers are as honest as any other class of men, but they are busy people and the thing that is put off is forgotten. They are in one town today and miles away tomorrow, and they may leave the manuscript on the bureau of their hotel room intending to mail it at the last minute—and rush away and forget it. Therefore you should ask for an immediate reading. It will take a performer only a few minutes to decide if he cares to consider your act. He knows of what he is in need—and usually is prepared to tell you.
(e) Do not ask for specific criticism, for of all people in the world vaudeville performers are the most good-hearted. They would rather please you than hurt you. They will evade the point nine times out of ten; so save them and yourself needless embarrassment. And thus you may also avoid a false valuation of your manuscript.
(f) If the performer cannot use the act himself, and if the act possesses merit, the chances are that he will suggest some other performer who might want it. If he does not suggest someone himself, ask him. Vaudeville performers know what other performers want, because they are continually discussing plans for "next season." You may thus pick up some valuable information, even if you do not dispose of the particular manuscript you have for sale.
3. Producing Your Act Yourself
While you are likely at many turns of the sales road to have offered you an opportunity to produce your own act, this method of finding a market is rarely advisable. You would not start a little magazine to get your short-story into print; your story could not possess that much value even if it were a marvel—how much less so if you were unable to find someone willing to buy it!
But there is a still more important reason why you should not rush into producing your act yourself. Producing is a specialized business, requiring wide experience and exact knowledge. Besides, it is one of the most expensive pastimes in the world. Without a most comprehensive experience and peculiar abilities, failure is sure. Do not attempt private production even if you are offered the services of a performer or a producer in whom you have absolute faith. Remember, if they thought your act was really worth while they would be anxious to reap the profits for themselves.
4. Selling an Act to a Producer
While any performer who owns his act is a producer in the sense that he "produces" his act, there are men who make a business of buying manuscripts, engaging people, and producing many acts in which they do not themselves play. Producers who may own a dozen acts of all different kinds would seem to offer to the writer for vaudeville an ideal market. How, then, is the writer to get in touch with them?
(a) Selling through a Play broker is a method that is precisely the same as though you consigned a bill of goods to a commission agent, and paid him for disposing of it. The play broker reads your manuscript and engages to try to dispose of it for you, or returns it as not likely to fit in with the particular line of business of which he makes a specialty. If your act is really good and yet the broker is able to make some suggestions that will improve it, he is likely to offer such suggestions, purely in the hope of earning a commission, and in this way he may prove of distinct value as a critic. In any event, if he accepts a manuscript to sell for you, he will offer it in the quarters he thinks most likely to produce it and will attend to all the business incidental to the making of the contract.