 By reducing the space he needed to fill with fiction Pohl managed to stretch his budget . A long letter column took up several pages but required no payment , and neither did running advertisements for Popular 's other magazines . Some authors sent inaccurate word counts with the stories they submitted , and savings were made by paying them on the basis of whichever word count was less — the author 's or one done by Popular 's staff . The result was a saving of forty to fifty dollars per issue . <unk> elements of black and white illustrations were also reused to fill space , as multiple uses of the same artwork did not require additional payments to the artist . 
