Читать книгу One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money - Harold Morse Dunphy - Страница 178

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The journalistic graveyards are full of monuments to the misdirected energy and zeal of aspiring “newspaper men” who had plenty of enthusiasm but lacked experience, or resourcefulness in the matter of ideas.

The young fellow, however, of whom we are going to speak had ideas and knew how to put them to practical use. He knew very well that a new weekly newspaper that did not have something besides its own merits to amuse and keep up a local interest would be but a short-lived affair in any community, so he devised a method which he felt sure would create that interest.

He employed a thoroughly competent publicity specialist to write him a small book with a catchy title, which he could offer as a premium with each subscription to his paper. The publicity man turned out an interesting piece of work, which he completed in four days, and for which he charged the prospective young publisher $75.

A printer charged him $250 for 5,000 copies of these little books, and after giving one of each to 500 new subscribers of his paper, he advertised them in his own and other papers, and sold the remainder at 10 cents each. When the supply was exhausted, he had more of the books printed and continued to sell them until he had realized a profit of $2,000 from them.

By this time his weekly newspaper had grown in circulation and advertising value so that it was bringing in a good revenue every year, but he kept on advertising and selling books with good titles, as he found this source of income was well worth the additional effort.