A NEW MACMILLAN NOVEL A literary event of the season Odtaa by John Masefield Another thrilling story filled with romance This book will be one of those featured Two Powerful Novels Age-Old Question. To Be Published February 15th PARADOX by HOWARD ROCKEY Author of "This Woman" and "Daughters of Luxury." "Paradox" will stimulate the most satiated fiction reader. It tells how a charming young New York matron, adoring her husband and loved by him with a passionate devotion, faces a problem that seems to have no solution. THE BLACK STAMP by WILL SCOTT Whenever the sinister Black Stamp appears a man vanishes inexplicably. "Disher," a type of detective new to fiction, a man with a sense of humor as keen as his craft, unravels a mystery that will hold the reader in suspense and defy solution until the dénouement is reached, MACRAE SMITH COMPANY, Publishers 1712-1714 Ludlow Street Philadelphia are I. It is told in the time value of a novel as life happens. The changes and the surprises that came to Lincoln brought out a good deal like the changes and surprises that come suddenly into the lives of any one of us. 2. Sandburg describe's Lincoln's neighbors, his cronies, his wife and children, his house, the sidewalk off which he shovelled snow, the cornfield opposite his bedroom as well as distant men, women and events that influenced his life. Limited edition on rag paper, signed by the author, $25.00 The PUBLISHERS WEEKLY THE AMERICAN BOOKTRADE JOURNAL NEW YORK, JANUARY 16, 1926 Better Advertising Results Some Booksellers Find That They Get Better Results With Their Newspaper Space When They Avoid the Commanding Tone A. A. Shields COME of the most successful newspaper advertising being run by retail booksellers is that which adopts the method of appeal instead of the commanding tone. The difference between the two principles is best illustrated by an incident that Odds Bodkins told about his friend Rochester B. Jones, in Advertising Fortnightly, not long ago. Jones was attending an athletic tournament on Long Island one summer afterhoon. When he saw two boys selling palm leaf fans at the entrance with only moderate success, he began to analyze their methods. "Buy a fan!" the boys were calling out. He beckoned the smaller of the two boys to him. This youth was selling even fewer fans than his competitor. After Jones had whispered something into his ear, he grinned, went back to his post and began to call: "It's hot in the grandstand!" Right away his sales began to pick up and soon he was selling three out of every five fans used. The too-common tendency to command has been attributed by advertising authorities to self-consciousness on the part of the person writing the advertisement. When he sits down to prepare an advertisement he wants to sell and tries too strenuously to put "selling talk" into the copy. Instead, it is far better to include something that can be identified with the newspaper reader's personal motives. Edgar James Swift, psychologist, says: "Facts for which we have no use are forgotten. Personal motives, of course, play the leading part in a good memory." It is easy to fall into the error of using the commanding tone if you think too much of advertising. There is too much worship of advertising for advertising's sake upon the part of some advertising men who want to make of it a mysterious and 'difficult rite. What the newspaper advertisement is for is to carry your helpful suggestions to the people who would be logical prospects for you. As David Dulaney once expressed it in Printers Ink: "Frequently it is not a knowledge of advertising he needs most, but a knowledge of the mechanics of life." There is a suggestion for retail booksellers in what Helen Landon Cass, advertising manager for an Albany store, told the convention of Associated Retail Advertisers: "People don't buy things to have things; they buy things to work for them. They buy hope, hope of what your merchandise will do for them. Earrings we buy, not as twinkling bits of jeweled metal, but because they will give us youth or age, sophistication, piquancy or romance. We are trying to buy the gifts of the gods two for fifty-nine cents. Furs mean luxury |