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    Untitled Article

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    Untitled Article

    But while it must be confessed , that the opinions of auth . org on this important subject , are usuall y founded on over-sanguine expectations , speculative fancies , and a very limited experience , all of which render them unsafe advisers , we cannot help perceiving that many of the best plans adopted by publishers are mingled with erroneous estimates . Thus , he who perseveres

    in regular and extensive advertising , seldom pays much attention to the coincidence of the quarter in which he advertises , with the particular work . It is not meant that a book of radical principles should be advertised only in the radical journals : it should go almost equally to both , for many reasons ; but we do think that when a publisher advertises works of a highly-refined , imaginative , or political nature , of profound and

    elaborate science , of learning , or of the fine arts , in the quarters chiefly adapted to announcements of mere merchandize , furniture , price of stocks , insolvent debtors , and people who * want places '—whether in the court or the kitchen—it really seems to us that the publishers throw away their money . In some cases , —as of popular works on common diseases—the extent of the circulation of a periodical , is the most important consideration to the advertiser ; in others , the class among whom it

    circulates . That no profuseness m advertising will make a good-for-nothing work sell beyond a certain time and number , is manifest from the oblivious disappearance about every second or third year , dating from their first appearance , of nearly all the novels from the pens of those who are usually termed popular writers . ' They produce sometimes a little profit , and then are

    seen no more among the advertisements , or any where else , the publishers having found , that no more work' could be got out of them . That a good book has a sufficient chance of success merely from the introduction it receives at the hands of the periodicals , depends on whether it has been properly appreciated " , and reviewed by the critics , and whether the public mind is ripe for it . We must here remark , also , that the method of

    reviewing books generally adopted , is by no means calculated to forward their sale . An abstract is made of the work ; the best passages are extracted , ( for the good of the periodical ) the critic informs the public that there is nothing else of any value in the work ; and the publisher and author meet after a time to compare opinions as to why the result of so much * notice ' has not answered the expectations of either ? The review of a valuable book , ought to be suggestive , as well as analytic ; books are written for the public good , not for the periodicals ; it is time there should be some morality in criticism . * That a book which produces large profit to a publisher

    • It is long since wo have Been a review which so iidmirably combined sound analysis of principle , with suggestion of further good , as the article oa De TocqueTille in No . Ill of the London Review . You know what the work ia exactly , but you must buy the work nevertheless .

    Untitled Article

    Spirit of Modern Publishers . 273

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1836, page 273, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2657/page/9/