The next and almost equally obvious thing is to have Lauder make a phonograph record of some particularly effective passage in the book, marketing the record in the usual way, at a popular price. Newspaper and magazine advertising must be used heavily and must be distributed on the basis of circulation almost entirely. 8 The external factor in the success of the best seller is so undeveloped and so rich in possibilities that one takes leave of it with regret; but we must go on to some consideration of the internal factor that makes for big sales--the quality or qualities in the book itself. Without going into a long and elaborate investigation of best-seller books, sifting and reasoning until we reach rock bottom, we had better put down a few dogmas. These, then, are the essentials of best-selling fiction so far as our observation and intellect has carried us: 1. A good story; which means, as a rule, plenty of surface action but always means a crisis in the affairs of one or two most-likable characters, a crisis that is _satisfactorily_ solved. Mark the italicized word. Not a “happy ending” in the twisted sense in which that phrase is used. Always a happy ending in the sense in which we say, “That was a happy word”--meaning a fit word, the “mot juste” of the French. Always a fitting ending, not always a “happy ending” in the sense of a pleasant ending. The ending of _Mr. Britling Sees It Through_ is not pleasant, but fitting and, to the majority of readers, uplifting, ennobling, fine. 2. Depths below the surface action for those who care to plumb them. No piece of fiction can sell largely unless it has a region of philosophy, moral ideas--whatever you will to call it--for those who crave and must have that mental immersion. The reader must not be led beyond his depth but he must be able to go into deep water and swim as far as his strength will carry him if he so desires. 3. The ethical, social and moral implications of the surface action must, in the end, accord with the instinctive desires of mankind. This is nothing like as fearful as it sounds, thus abstractly stated. The instinctive desires of men are pretty well known. Any psychologist can tell you what they are. They are few, primitive and simple. They have nothing to do with man’s reason except that man, from birth to death, employs his reason in achieving the satisfaction of these instincts. The two oldest and most firmly implanted are the instinct for self-preservation and the instinct to perpetuate the race. The social instinct, much younger than either, is yet thousands upon thousands of years old and quite as ineradicable.