Chapter 217: Promotional Techniques in Journalism

Chapter 215 – Promotional Tips for Journalism

It was night time in Arthur’s mansion.

The shareholders and contributors of the Britannica magazine were gathered together, and Disraeli scrutinized the manuscripts in his hands, one by one.

After a long time, he pressed the thick pile of manuscripts in his hands onto the desktop with a smile on his face and let out a long breath: ”To be honest, I really can’t think of a reason for this magazine to fail. Each of the novels on it is a masterpiece, and even if they were to be distributed separately, they would be able to enlist hordes of loyal readers. And now they’ve been combined. In my opinion, eight pence per issue is still too cheap. Perhaps we could set the price a little higher? After all, our magazine’s copies are almost as big as three issues of The Times.”

Arthur clearly possessed a different view on the fact that Disraeli was thinking of raising the pricing before it was even released.

For him, making money from the newspaper business was secondary to building up public opinion through the Britannica and expanding his voice was his top priority.

And since he had just received a two thousand pound financing from the Rothschild family, he did not care to lose a large sum of money at the beginning of the magazine’s operation.

But in order to convince Disraeli and his partners, he obviously had to come up with a more convincing plan to make them forget about losing money.

Arthur did not first show his intentions, but politely threw out a strange theory: “Newspapers and magazines to make money or not actually does not depend on the sales of that little revenue, as far as I was in Scotland Yard as a front-line patrolman during that period of time to see, a lot of sales of newspapers are quite big business is actually not smooth. Sometimes the more they sell, the more money they lose.”

“Wow? What’s going on here?”

Although Disraeli had previously run a newspaper, he was a shirker at that time, or else he wouldn’t have been cheated and lost as much as seven thousand pounds.

At this time Arthur threw out such a novel theory, naturally also attracted the attention of this young man who was eager to prove himself.

Others were also interested in Arthur’s argument.

Alexandre Dumas asked directly, “If newspapers don’t make money from sales, what else can they make money from? Is it hard to believe that you can steal and cheat even if you run a newspaper?”

When Arthur heard this, he did not answer directly, but turned toward Dickens, who had been a longtime newspaperman.

“Charles, you have worked as a reporter for several newspapers, then you should know that after a newspaper removes the cost of printing and the cost of distribution, the profit that can be made from each copy is usually minimal.

However, the larger the newspaper, the larger the group of journalists it needs to keep, or the higher the fees it pays to bring in big name professional writers. This is the only way they can get first-hand news faster than other newspapers and get articles of the best quality.

And these behaviors lead to higher and higher expenses on personnel and content costs until they can no longer break even and have to go out of business. That’s why, in order to fill the hole, the big literary magazines and newspapers introduced the concept of advertising space.

For the really large news media, the money from selling magazines is good enough to cover their expenses, and their main profits are derived from advertising revenue. Am I right about that, I suppose?”

Dickens looked at Arthur with astonished eyes, he was surprised, “Arthur, I had thought that you were just a brilliant police officer, I didn’t realize that you actually knew so much about the ecology of the news magazine industry as well.”

Arthur smiled helplessly, “Actually, it’s not me who knows, but it’s Mr. Hesselington, who founded the Pauper Guardian, who knows. I just talked to him the other day, and he told me all these things. He also said that the Pauper Guardian is because it resolutely refuses to accept any advertisements, so even though it can sell tens of thousands of copies every day, it still can’t make a profit in the end.”

“Hatherington?” Elder’s head peeked out of the book-covered magazine, “Didn’t I hear he was arrested last month? How did he get released so quickly?”

Dumas took a sip of his coffee and spoke nonchalantly, “Elder, use that brain of yours more often when you have nothing to do, guess how Hatherington was arrested?”

Elder raised one eyebrow and pulled the corner of his mouth and laughed, “Arthur, for fuck’s sake, I say how did Hesselington get arrested somehow? The guys said he’s usually pretty secretive about his whereabouts. So it was you who did that, it all makes sense now. After all, you’re probably the only one in the whole of Scotland Yard with that kind of ability.”

Hearing this, Arthur just calmly said, “Elder, don’t get me wrong, the LPS doesn’t have the power to arrest the target, it’s Scotland Yard’s Tauerhamletts police district that carries out the arrests. And most importantly, Mr. Hatherington was voluntarily arrested by Scotland Yard.”

“Voluntarily accepted the arrest?” Dumas asked, frowning, “Why? Has Hatherington had too much Thames water? Or has he suddenly come down with some malady that enjoys being subjected to imprisonment?”

“Nothing.” Arthur returned, “I was just talking to him.”

“What did you say to him?” Arthur put down his teacup, “I told him that the reason he’s being charged this time is because the Tory government feels threatened by public opinion from the Pauper Guardian, and that the charge against him this time is a very minor one, merely failure to pay stamp duty properly.

In addition, the Tory Party was in a state of turmoil at that time, and most of the citizens of London were dissatisfied with the cabinet, so even if a case was filed, it might not be supported by the magistrate’s court and the jury, so the probability is that it would not receive a guilty verdict.

Therefore, instead of fleeing London to establish their own guilt, and thus leading to a trial in absentia, it would be better to follow Scotland Yard directly to the magistrate’s court.

Oh yes, I also mentioned to him that Mr. William Corbett, who founded the Poor Man’s Political Monthly back in the day, attacked stamp duty and satirized government corruption, and was sentenced to two years in prison for libel. As a result, after his release from prison, the sales of the Poor People’s Political Monthly increased rather than decreased, with over 40 000 copies sold every month.

While I don’t encourage Mr. Hatherington to follow Mr. Corbett’s example, I can’t say he’s breaking the law if he’s really using this as a marketing tool. Just go in for a month. It’ll be like gilding the lily for the paper.

And when the Poor Guardian comes out in the future, Mr. Hatherington can be proud to add at the beginning of the paper – the founder of this paper has been in prison, brackets, unfortunately, for a slightly shorter sentence than Mr. Corbett.”

Dickens was originally worried about Hatherington’s situation, but after listening to this passage from Arthur, he more than just let go of his hanging heart, but also couldn’t help but snicker, “In that case, in order to boost the sales of The Englishman, we can also consider electing a suitable candidate to send in?”

Arthur blinked at that as he pulled out the speed cuffs hanging from his belt and tossed them on the tabletop.

“I can’t go to jail for a while for work reasons, but I can help you guys out with a fast track. Would either of you be willing to sacrifice yourselves?”

Dumas raised his elbow to poke Elder, “It’s up to you.”

Elder sniffed and looked angrily at Dumas, “For fuck’s sake, Alexander, don’t get the back and forth wrong. It’s getting into prison first that gets you into the Royal Navy, and I’m at the later stages of that now.”

Arthur nodded at that, “Alexander, Elder is right about that. And it wouldn’t take much to send the boy to prison to get a libel charge like it did for Mr. Corbett, I’ve got a bunch of cases pressed against him.”

Darwin couldn’t help but laugh out loud at this.

Who knew that Elder, seeing him laughing, could not help looking at him angrily, “Charles, what face have you to laugh at me? Your crime is more serious than mine! I’m going to the church to sue you for intending to betray God.”

Who knows that when the red devil heard this, he just put one hand on Arthur’s shoulder and laughed evilly, “Betraying God? Oh, my dear Arthur, there should be another one of us here who betrayed God, right?”

Arthur didn’t pay any attention to him, but instead spoke at Disraeli who was deep in thought, “So now, Benjamin, you should understand that it’s basically impossible to make a profit by peddling newspapers. We can only expand our sales and attract enough advertisers to invest, so that we can ensure the healthy development of the magazine.

And if we want to get sales up, blindly raising pricing is not feasible. Perhaps for the upper classes, it makes no difference if the magazine is priced a penny more or less. But for the middle class who are careful with their money, or for the average worker who is of average means, every little increase in the selling price will cost us a group of readers.”

Disraeli looked like he was struggling a bit, “But that’s true, but even if you don’t consider the initial profitability. But you must also consider the vanity of the middle class, there are times when lowering the price of a magazine too low will make them think that reading our magazine is not classy.

We can’t really be like the Poor Guardian selling only a penny an issue, can we? They don’t have to pay stamp duty, so naturally they can keep their costs down, but if we sell it for threepence, we’ll have to go backwards by two pence per copy, even without counting the cost of printing, and that’s no way to do business!”

Arthur thought for a moment, then suddenly smiled and asked, “So, Benjamin, have you thought about step pricing?”

Disraeli was puzzled, “What’s ladder pricing?”

Arthur spoke, “It’s easy to understand, that is, for the upper and middle classes, we adopt a normal pricing strategy. At the same time, we can also delay for a few weeks to put some magazines aimed at ordinary workers in used bookstores or second-hand vendors on the streets, and this part of the magazine will definitely be sold cheaper than the original ones.

Of course, in order to expand our popularity, perhaps we could also offer some free magazines to the dedicated pub readers, as our long running novels would be a big hit with the readers. Also, I should mention that I have a concert coming up this weekend at the Coburg Theater.

If you can get the first issue of the magazine printed in time for the concert, I think it might be a good idea to give a small gift to the guests after the concert, and I’m sure that the ladies and gentlemen who have a lot of spending power will be very interested in our stylish novels.”

Disraeli’s eyes lit up at his words, his fingers tapping on the desktop, smiling and speaking, “That’s right …… this stuff is like laudanum, I can guarantee that as soon as they’ve finished reading the first issue, they’ll definitely be thinking about another bottle.”

(End of chapter)