han you can digest.
That part of its influence which is concentrated where men and women
can't get your _goods_ after you get their _attention_, is _sheer
waste_.

By dividing the number of copies he prints into his line rate, a
publisher may fallaciously demonstrate to you that his space is sold as
low as that of his stronger competitors, but if half his circulation is
too _far away to bring buyers_, his real _rate_ is double what it seems.
He is like the butcher who weighs in all the bone and sinew and fat and
charges you as much for the _waste_ as he does for the _meat_.

The Omelette Souffle

There is a vast distinction between distribution for the sake of
increasing the _circulation figures_ and distribution for the sake of
increasing the number of _advertising responses_.

There is a difference between a circulation which strikes the _same_
reader several times in the _same_ day and the circulation which does
_not_ repeat the individual. There is a difference between circulation
which is concentrated into an area from which every reader can be
expected to come to your establishment, if you can _interest_ him, and a
circulation that spreads over half a dozen states and shows its greatest
volume in territory so far from your establishment that you can't get a
buyer out of ten thousand readers.

You've got to weigh and measure all these things when you weigh and
measure circulation figures. It isn't the number of copies _printed_,
but the number of copies _sold_--not the number of papers _distributed_,
but the number of papers distributed in _responsive_ territory--not the
number of readers _reached_, but the number of readers who have the
price to _buy_ what you want to _sell_--that determine the value of
circulation to _you_.

You can take a single egg and whip it into an omelette souffle which
_seems_ to be a _whole plateful_, but the extra bulk is just _hot air_
and _sugar_--the change in form has not increased the amount of egg
_substance_ and it's the _substance_ in circulation, just as it is the
_nutrition_ in the egg, that _counts_.

[ Transcriber's Note:

The following is a list of corrections made to the original. The first
line is the original line, the second the corrected one.

pronounced--you musn't stop short of a _knock-down impression_.
pronounced--you mustn't stop short of a _knock-down impression_.
]

End of Project Gutenberg's The Clock that Had no Hands,