Funny Lines For Cash
You can sell your good
jokes to all kinds of comedian and
cartoonists if you follow
simple procedures when submitting. But
like Greeting Card writing,
this is an extremely competitive
field and unless you are
very good, you cannot expect to make a
living at it.
Start by looking through
the latest edition of the Writer's
Market under Gag Writing.
You might be surprised
at the large number of cartoonists
looking for work, and even
more surprised by the kind of work
they're seeking. Make a
study of this section of the book before
you start writing gags
and making submissions.
One idea: when making
your first set of submissions, include a
card that reads as follows:
Thank you for the submission, but I
am returning them because
they are:
___ Not suitable
for my markets ___ Not professional
___ Not funny enough
___ Not funny at all
___ I don't need
new submissions at this time
Expect to see the last
slot checked off frequently. What this
card will do is show you
who is most impressed by your work and
who might be a better bet
for a future sale. If you sent your
best batch of gags to someone
you thought could use them and he
says they aren't funny
at all, why waste postage trying to
change his mind?
If you want to give this
a try, start writing gags immediately
and file a lot of them,
several hundred if possible, before
making your submissions.
The more you have to choose from, the
better your choices will
be and the better your chances of
making a sale. Be aware
that payment for cartoon ideas is not as
good as for greeting cards.
If you get some positive
response from your submissions, you
might even want to start
hanging around at comedy dubs. Young
comics need the very best
material that they can get if they
hope to make any sort of
name for themselves, and many will be
happy to pay two to five
dollars for a good line. Provided, of
course, that you don't
turn around and resell it to someone else
the next day.
Don't forget that many
daily newspapers and magazines pay cash
for good jokes but they
tend to get swamped with submissions, so
unless you have a lot of
faith in your idea you just might be
wasting postage.
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