Specimens of Type in Use by S. W. Green's Son
An 1881 pamphlet from S. W. Green's Son, electrotyper, printer and binder at 74 and 76 Beekman Street, New York, for authors and publishers planning a book.
What it is
An 1881 pamphlet from S. W. Green's Son, electrotyper, printer and binder at 74 and 76 Beekman Street, New York, for authors and publishers planning a book. It opens with a guide to 'casting off': count the words in ten lines at several places, average them, multiply out to the whole manuscript, then divide by the words a chosen type holds per page. A worked example takes 1,146 manuscript pages, about 293,949 words, and tries sizes until the book fits 640 pages, then works out sheet size, paper weight and quantity: 88 reams for 2,000 copies, 90 once binder's waste is added. Tables cover folds, signatures, paper weights and lines per foot. The rest is 38 specimen pages from Pica to Pearl, each face leaded and solid, all setting one passage from George Eliot's Adam Bede, each with a card of lines, words per page and words per square inch.
Why read it now
This is a sales piece built as a working tool. The printer does the buyer's arithmetic in the buyer's units, pages, reams and copies, and every answer leads back to his own composing room, presses and bindery. The closing letter says so openly: the tables are meant to add ems, reams and volumes to his yearly output. The candour costs nothing, because the tool is useful either way. Giving buyers a planning method still holds. Gartner's B2B research finds buyers spend only about 17 percent of their buying time with suppliers, so the vendor whose method they use shapes the decision before any meeting. The specimen pages add proof: each face at real size, leaded and solid, with its capacity measured, so a publisher sees the trade-off between a comfortable page and a cheaper book. What has dated is the physical side: hand-set metal, ems, reams of 480 sheets. Use it by building the estimate your buyer must make anyway, a cost, size or timeline calculator in their units, with your offer inside the answer.
Passages worth keeping
Count in different places the words in ten consecutive lines, divide by ten, and thus get a general average of words in a line.
طريقة تقدير عدد الكلمات: عُدّ كلمات عشرة أسطر متتالية في مواضع مختلفة، واقسم على عشرة، فتحصل على متوسط الكلمات في السطر، ومنه تحسب حجم المخطوطة كلها.
hoping of course that it will be the means of adding hundreds of millions of ems to the yearly product of my composing-rooms, of bringing thousands of reams of paper to my presses and tens of thousands of volumes to my bindery
صاحب المطبعة يقول بصراحة إن غايته من هذه الجداول أن تجلب إليه عملًا كثيرًا في الجمع والطباعة والتجليد، فالأداة المجانية وسيلة بيع معلنة لا مخفية.
Any of the sample pages, printed on one side only, will be furnished separately on application
أي صفحة عينة يمكن طلبها منفردة لأنها مطبوعة على وجه واحد، فيستطيع الناشر أن يعرضها على المؤلف أو يرفقها بطلبه.
PRICES AS LOW AS FIRST CLASS WORKMANSHIP WILL PERMIT
الأسعار منخفضة بالقدر الذي تسمح به جودة العمل من الدرجة الأولى، فالمطبعة تربط السعر بالجودة ولا تعد بأنها الأرخص.
Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult.
جملة من رواية آدم بيد اختيرت نصًا للعينات: الكذب سهل والصدق صعب، وهي قاعدة تصلح أيضًا لكل من يكتب الإعلانات.
What it teaches best
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