The Printing Art Sample Book, Vol. IV, No. 1 (August 1909)
The August 1909 issue that opened volume four of The Printing Art Sample Book, a monthly from the University Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, bound from inserts printed on the papers they advertise.
What it is
The August 1909 issue that opened volume four of The Printing Art Sample Book, a monthly from the University Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, bound from inserts printed on the papers they advertise. The lead editorial, Waste in Paper and Printing, names two wastes: editions larger than needed, and weak work. It tells of a Boston printer who advised printing 5,000 soap wrappers instead of 50,000 until the dies were ready, and argues that a catalogue should be budgeted like a salesman, as a share of sales: two or three per cent for shoes and groceries, ten or more for seedsmen. A note on mounting prints follows, then reviews of readers' work. The exhibits include Wheelwright's Soufflé featherweight, Pinnacle Coated, Herculean, Onyx and Buckeye covers, a Carver-pressed letterhead on Danish Bond, and a ten-dollar prize for naming a sample stock.
Why read it now
The catalogue editorial holds up. Budgeting sales material as a share of expected sales, and judging a catalogue the way you judge a salesman, is still how sound budgets are set, and the writer admits the hard part: returns are rarely recorded, because orders arrive without naming the catalogue. The magazine's own fix is worth copying. It offers a free book to any reader who reports an order placed because of an exhibit, since the mills cannot see sales that pass through dealers. That is attribution by self-report, and it still works where tracking is blind, as with phone or WhatsApp orders. The soap-wrapper story is a plain case for small first runs until the specs are fixed. What has dated: the percentages are trade custom, not measured data, and the case for spending big rests on one example, the Selfridge store opening in London. Use: for a Saudi client selling through distributors, ask every buyer at order time where they heard of the product, and reward the answer.
Passages worth keeping
If not, he would ask if it would not be better to print 5000 at first instead of 50,000 wrappers.
الطابع الحكيم ينصح عميله بكمية صغيرة حتى تكتمل المواصفات، فيحميه من طباعة كمية كبيرة قد تُرمى.
The exact efficiency in the value of an advertisement or catalogue is seldom determined because of the difficulty of recording the returns.
قياس أثر الإعلان صعب لأن المبيعات لا تُنسب دائمًا إلى مصدرها، وهذه مشكلة قديمة في التسويق.
The cost of a catalogue should bear the same relation to results produced as in any other form of salesmanship.
الكتالوج بائع صامت، فتُحسب كلفته بالنسبة إلى ما يحققه من مبيعات كما تُحسب رواتب البائعين.
It is becoming more and more a question of not how much, but how well.
المهم جودة المطبوعة لا كميتها، فالتوفير في الجودة هو الهدر الحقيقي.
manufacturers cannot get any adequate information direct because the majority of orders are placed through paper dealers in the different cities
المصنع لا يعرف أثر إعلانه لأن البيع يتم عبر الموزعين، ولذلك تكافئ المجلة القارئ الذي يخبرها بما اشتراه.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
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