SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[17nder this heading we notice such Books of the week 55 have not ken reserved for regime in other forms.] Getting on : the Confessions of a Publisher. By John Adams Thayer. (T. Werner Laurie. 6s.)—Mr. Thayer has much to say about printing, and more about advertising. The figures which he gives may well make mouths on this side of the Atlantic water. He took to the work of a compositOr and earned -a a week when he was fourteen, and .R2 8s. five years later, but his
"hours were from seven to six "—he does not mention intervals. A little further on we hear of the "usual composing-room wage of eighteen dollars (£3 16s. 3d.). Then, when we reach the adver- tisement section of the book we read of astonishing results : £60 a page (of the ordinary magazine size) is one of them. Tho figures of circulation, too, are not a little surprising. The one thing that we hear very little about is literature. Presumably this is taken for granted. The book is too full of technicalities to be very interesting to the general reader. One thing in it we may praise unreservedly, and this is the firm stand Mr.Thayer made against deceiving advertisements. Prominent among these were the quack medicines and the swindling finance. We need such reformers over here. "It is the paper of good standing, large circulation and high advertising rates which gets the business and open-eyed becomes party to the fraud." The quack medicine advertisements are prominent everywhere. And did not a certain notorious bank, with its manifestly impossible promises, figure in the columns of the most respectable newspapers?
Previous page
