ILL you mail these for me when you go out to lunch?" The Old Bookseller handed the Junior Clerk a packet of letters. The Junior Clerk took them. When he returned from lunch he sought the Old Bookseller.

"I mailed the letters" he stated. "There were seventy-three of them. They were all addressed to 'Master' so and so. What's the idea?"

"Those letters to boys? Why, they were letters to lads on the subscription list, advising them of some new books for boys."

"What's the subscription list?"

"We take in a certain number of subscriptions for Youth's Companion, American Boy, Boys' Life, St. Nicholas, and so on. Parents subscribe for their children, you know. The office keeps the names of all such, with the addresses, in a special card file. It's a very valuable list, as long as it is kept up to date and not allowed to run to seed."

"I suppose I am stupid, but I don't understand."

"Why, names of boys and girls who read boys' and girls' periodicals, are names of children who read!" exclaimed the Old Bookseller, impatiently. "A child who reads is the readingest kind of reader! Most parents with reading children like to foster the habit. So when I get in some good books for boys and girls, I write a

letter about them, to the list. I get anywhere from ten to thirty orders out of such letters, if I don't send them too often."

"But why don't you write to the parents? They are the ones who have the money!" objected the Junior Clerk.

"Psychology again!" answered the Old Bookseller. "The parent is apt to say 'well, Johnny has enough books' or 'Mary better put her mind on her school work right now.' That, of course, is sales resistance; Mr. and Mrs. Parent are rationalizing about not wanting to spend money for books! But when I appeal to the boy or girl, they don't rationalize! They want the book. And they just get after father or mother or both until the book is forthcoming! Of those seventy-three letters, not one in twenty would produce an order if addressed to the father. But addressed to the boy or girl, I am certain of one in ten, and have a good chance for even better."

"But does that pay?" asked the Junior Clerk. "What does it cost to get out a letter like that?"

"Counting postage and stationery and time about six cents a letter," was the answer. "That's $4.38 for the batch you mailed."

"But then, if you sell one in ten, you won't much more than break even!"

"Suppose I don't. You can't expect to make a profit all the time," answered the

Old Bookseller, composedly. "I am not in business for today, only. The boy and girl of today are the man and woman of tomorrow. The habits of youth are hard to break. Get the children to feeling that the bookstore where father and mother buy books is interested in them; get them to looking to that bookstore for all their books and magazines, and they can't be dragged away from you when they get big enough to want to go out and buy their own books and magazines for themselves."

"I never thought of that."

"No, that's why you are a Junior Clerk!" responded the Old Bookseller.

"But do all bookstores keep lists, and write letters?"

"How can I tell what all bookstores do?" countered the Old Bookseller. "I suppose there are many which do not. But you can't sell anything by hiding the fact that you have it. If you have something to sell, you must let people know that you possess it. You can, of course, advertise in the newspapers. But the book buying proportion of the circulation of the average newspaper is small. You pay for a great deal of waste circulation, unless, of course, it is a book of intense national interest; a book that every one wants to read, in which case you probably won't have to advertise it at all. I have a large number of lists, and I use them all the time.

"What other lists have you?"

"Well, the Religious List is about as big as any. In spite of the tendency of the day, and the fact that every periodical is sighing and moaning over the fact that morally we are going to the dogs and that the old time religion is no more, as a matter of fact there are a great many people who are intensely interested in religious books. I don't mean propaganda books, necessarily, but such works as Sir William Frazer's Golden Bough, in one volume, and his Folk Lore in the Old Testament; books like My Idea of God edited by Newton and Brown's This Believing World. I keep a special list of these customers and any book which seems to fit their interests is made the subject of a letter or a postal card. You'd be surprised what a response I get.

"Then there is the popular science list. There are many people who take a more and more intelligent interest in the work

"The mystery list!" The Old Bookseller chuckled. "I don't suppose there is a harmless passion in all this world . . . not even that which has as its object pigs feet and saur kraut . . . which takes hold of its devotees with such relentless grip as the hopeless passion for the perfect mystery story.

“I sometimes think that all people are criminals at heart and that the only way they can satisfy their desire is to read about how the other fellow committed the murder, or made off with the gems, or managed the abduction and got the reward. There is no dividing up mystery tale lovers; they are the high, the low, the educated, the ignorant, the young, the old, the rich and the poor. And when you have a real diedin-the-wool mystery-tale-fan, you can always get an order out of him by a letter about a new mystery tale, provided you don't fool him!

"But you have to beware. If you tell him you have the unsolvable mystery, and he buys it and gets the solution before he has read half thru the book, he'll never forgive you or believe you again! It's much safer to tell him the truth. He'll forgive you if you don't blurb, even if he isn't pleased."

"You said something else I didn't understand . . . about not letting the boys and girls list run to seed" put in the Clerk.

"No list must be allowed to go to seed," answered the Old Bookseller. "The important thing about a list is that it be alive. A dead one is of no more use than any other corpse. Johnny is fourteen today . . . he'll be eighteen in four years. The

story of the full back who won the great game, or the Indian hunter who walked alone thru darkest Africa and came out with buried treasure after being made chief of the savage tribe, will intrigue him now, but not then. Miss Twelve Year Old is a fan for books about girl's schools now, but when she is sixteen and cutting off her hair and putting on shorter skirts and growing up, she's beginning to think she's a blasé young lady and 'beyond' the Louisa Alcott stage. I try to get ages on my cards... if not, I never keep a card more than two years if it produces no orders. "There are a lot of people in this city, and while not one in ten reads books, they form a greater number of customers than I

have or ever expect to have. But I am going to get all I can of them interested in this particular store and one of the ways to do it is to spend money on letters every day. I can afford to spend nine hundred dollars a year in direct advertising, and I'll still feel that I can afford it if it only pays for itself and no more. As a matter of fact it pays very well for itself, and shows a very nice little profit on the time, effort and expense. But the big profit is in the future."

"Almost thou dost persuade me to continue here and become a bookseller," smiled the Junior Clerk.

"Almost am I persuaded to continue to keep you here to see if you can!" retorted the Old Bookseller.