Besides the magazines noted, other writer-craft and photographic publications may publish market-notes from time to time.
It is by no means necessary to buy both books and to subscribe for all the magazines; but if you can do so without financial discomfort, it cannot be otherwise than to your advantage. By all means, obtain one of the market-books and subscribe for one of the writer-craft magazines; and if you can add a photographic publication, so much the better. Even a market-book alone is a great aid; indeed, it is a necessity. Obtain one or both and you will be amazed at the number of times each can say, "Open Sesame" without stuttering.
The best salesman in the world could not induce a sane blacksmith to put in a stock of groceries. If the salesman has groceries to sell, he goes to a grocer and talks. Similarly, a photographer cannot hope to sell the most remarkable photograph in the world, unless he sends it to the right market.
Each magazine has its own particular needs; but the needs of different ones overlap so far, and are sometimes so similar, that a print offered to one and rejected by it may be very desirable to another; this applies to classes of magazines as well as individual publications. As an instance: Popular Mechanics, or Illustrated World, although requiring unusual photographs, rarely buy photographs of human freaks—but nevertheless the Saturday Blade (Chicago) uses just that sort of thing.
A few blocks from here stands the largest writing-tablet factory in the world: a photograph of it would not be acceptable to the rotogravure-sections nor to Popular Mechanics, Illustrated World, nor to Popular Science; yet such a photograph would be useful to an architectural magazine, a stationers' publication, or a local newspaper. When a photograph may be viewed from several industrial angles, as well as from a new-achievement or from a human-interest standpoint, the more likely are markets to open for it. The press-photographer should not stop until he has tried every possible market.
After one or two rejections, the photographer is apt to form the opinion that editors are prejudiced against his work because he is a beginner; but nothing could be further from the fact. One national magazine says; "Should we return what you submit, do not be discouraged. Sooner or later, if you study our needs carefully, you will succeed in finding what we are after." The same thing is true of every other magazine. There is not one of them but is eager to buy your wares if you offer them the kind of goods they want.
A rejection is not a rebuke. It is a challenge. It means that your "nose for news" has failed you—has played you false; or that you have tried to sell groceries to a blacksmith. Rest assured that no editor will willfully refuse to accept, pay for and print any photograph which possesses enough merit to warrant acceptance. The editor holds his chair only so long as he produces the kind and quality of magazine its owners want him to produce; and he can do that only by co-operation with contributors. Without contributors he is at sea in a tub. The editor is the best friend the press-photographer can have.
It matters not how much "pull" you have with an editor, or how near a relative you are, or how good a friend, you can't sell a photograph to him unless you "deliver the goods."
Elliot Walker observes: "The way to sell is to give editors what they want and in the way they want it." If you do that you can't fail if you try.
Nor will any editor reject your photographs because of his personal feelings. "The magazine-editor, in the first place, keeps his personal feelings tied up; in the second place, he would be foolish, indeed, to allow them to influence his decisions; and, in the third place, the editor 'ain't got no' personal feelings when it comes to buying material for his magazine."