ity is best left alone. The book must do the work itself.

The book has now reached the place where that which is commonly called
advertising should begin; that is, publicity in newspapers and
magazines. The use of newspapers, to any great extent at least, is a
comparatively recent development in the publishing business, dating
back not much more than ten years. Its efficiency, that is to say, its
proportion of return to outlay, is far from being established. While
at the beginning of the movement great rewards were reaped, the light
of more mature experience seems to show that those books which, under
heavy newspaper advertising, reached editions of 100,000 to 150,000
were really special cases,--books of a peculiarly popular, almost
low-grade, quality, that had an exceptional public. It is sure that
what brought success with them would not succeed with the average
publication. For this reason, publishers to-day are by no means as
lavish as they used to be with their appropriation for newspaper
advertising. Yet even in this era of retrenchment a very large
proportion of the money devoted to publicity still goes to the
newspapers.

While it would be foolish to attempt formulating a set of fixed rules
for newspaper advertising, there are certain underlying principles
that should be borne in mind.

Books are in the class of luxuries; most books at least. There is no
natural demand for them to assist the advertiser, such as there is for
food-stuffs. With a book, it is the advertiser's business to persuade
the buyer that he will be interested or instructed or amused by the
volume to the value of his outlay, be it a quarter or fifty
dollars,--where in the matter of necessities and food commodities the
advertiser's task is the much more simple one of proving that his
product is intrinsically better or better value than any similar thing
on the market. The sale of a book depends entirely upon the almost
artificial desire that is created for it, whereas with other things
there is a real need, and it is necessary only to prove that the
article fills this need. For these reasons book advertising--with
piano, picture, music, candy, and perhaps automobile advertising--is
difficult to carry out profitably. It is the class most expensive
proportionately to the value of the product, for it can count in
only the smallest degree upon what is known as the "cumulative" effect
of a campaign. Every advertisement of such an article as a br