Chapter 3

A dealer in precious stones would be foolish to open up in a tenement district, and equally short-sighted, to tell about his jewelry in a newspaper largely distributed there. Out of ten thousand men and women who might _see_ what he had to say not ten of them could _afford to buy his goods_. These ten thousand readers would be mass without muscle. He could make them _willing_ to do business with him, but _their incomes wouldn't let them become customers_.

One of the greatest mistakes in publicity is _to drop your lines where the fish can't take your bait_.

Circulation is, as you see, a very interesting subject, but very few people know anything about it. It would surprise you to know that this ignorance often extends to the business offices of newspapers. I have known publishers to continually mistake the _class of_ their readers and have met hundreds of them who had the most fantastic ideas upon the figures of their circulation.

While I would not be so harsh as to accuse them of anything more than being _mistaken_, none the less their tendency to infect _others_ with this misinformation renders it extremely advisable for _you to_ become a member of the Missouri society--and "_be shown_."

Don't rely solely on circulation statements. You don't understand the tricks in their making. Make the newspaper which carries your advertisement show you the list of its advertisers. A newspaper which prints the most advertising, month after month, year after year, is always the best medium. This is equally true in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Kenosha and Walla Walla.

The Mistake of the Big Steak

Watch out for _waste_ in circulation. Find out _where_ your story is going to be _read_. Don't pay for planting the seed of publicity in a spot where you are not going to _harvest_ the results.

The manufacturer of soap who has his goods on sale from Oskaloosa to Timbuctoo doesn't care _how widely_ a newspaper circulation is scattered. Whoever reads about his product is near to _some_ store or other where it is sold--but you have just _one_ store.

Buying advertising circulation is very much like ordering a steak--if the waiter brings you a porter-house twice as big as your _digestion_ can handle, you've paid twice as much as the steak was worth to _you_, even if it _is_ worth the price to the restaurant man.

You derive your profit not from the circulation that your _advertisement_ gets, but from circulation _that gets people to buy_.

If two newspapers offer you their columns and one shows a distribution almost entirely within the city and in towns that rely upon your city for buying facilities, your business can digest all of its influence. If the other has _as much circulation_, but only _one third_ of it is in _local territory_, mere bulk cannot establish its value to _you_--_it's another case of the big steak_--you pay for more than 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 Soufflé

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 soufflé 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, by Herbert Kaufman