confessions, mine and theirs, True Story

 

In June I attended a research institute in Ohio. It was a scholarly thing, populated by grad students and independent researchers all studying some aspect of pop culture. My research project was on Betty and Veronica from the Archie comics prior and after the Comics Code Authority approval process. While I was passing through the stacks, I spotted a shelf filled with issues of True Story, a confession genre magazine I published with in the very beginning of my writing career. I think I sold about a dozen of my very secret and scandalous confessions. Naturally, upon seeing these issues I had to make a video - see above. The confession magazines printed stories they claimed to be the darkest confessions from all around the world. Looking back now, I think they are much like the reality shows of today. The stories fill the same niche.

Here's what the ultra trusty and scholarly source Encycopeida.com has to say about these magazines:

"In May 1919, the first issue of True Story appeared with the motto "Truth is stranger than fiction." For 20 cents a copy, twice the price of most other magazines, readers received 12 stories with titles such as "A Wife Who Awoke in Time" and "My Battle with John Barleycorn." Most of the protagonists were sympathetic characters, innocent, lower-class women who appealed to a feminine readership. Instead of drawings, live models were photographed in a clinch of love or clad in pajamas while a man brandished a pistol, adding more realism to the confessions. The first cover featured a man and woman looking longingly at each other with the caption, "And their love turned to hated!" The magazine also offered "$1,000.00 for your life romance," a cheap price compared to what many magazines paid for professional contributions. The result was an immediate success, selling 60,000 issues, and the circulation quickly climbed into the millions.

"Although True Stories eventually reached a circulation of 2.5 million during the 1930s, it cost less to produce than most other magazines, and therefore earned as much as $10,000 a day for its founder. True Stories and other confession magazines also provided a valuable outlet for otherwise disconnected people to learn appropriate private and public social behavior. During times of rapid change, these magazines helped women to re-establish their identities through the experiences of other women like themselves. Most importantly, in an era when sex was rarely mentioned in public, the confession magazines taught both women and men that sex was natural, healthy, and enjoyable under appropriate circumstances."

Based on what I wrote and sold, I'm not so sure about that last sentence. I don't doubt that the magazines made money though because, as I wrote above, the checks were good.