TOPICS OF THE DAY.
TO OUR READERS.
WE desire to thank the very large number of corre- spondents who have written to congratulate us upon the reduced price, the enlarged type of the Spectator and our other improvements, such as our Overseas Notes and our developments on the literary side. As we appealed to the supporters of the Spectator to help us to justify the reduction of the price of the Spectator to 6d. by obtaining an increased circulation for us, we feel that they will expect us to tell them the results. These have been most satisfactory. The readers we lost through raising the price to 9d.— a rise which was inevitable in the circumstances—have not only all returned to us, but have brought a consider- able number of new readers in their train. (We mean later to follow the modern practice of publishing our net sales, but this must be deferred till a certificate based on precise information can be obtained from our auditors. Our readers will, we venture to think, be surprised as well as interested in the figures, which we admit have hitherto been much too zealously guarded in obedience to an old but useless tradition.) We have also plenty of evidence that our readers have taken to heart our suggestion that one of the best ways of helping the Spectator to maintain its position is to become a regular annual subscriber—i.e., by sending an order in advance either directly to our office or to a newsagent or railway bookstall. We have every hope that a still larger number of readers will become annual subscribers at the New Year, and so help us to avoid the waste which is bound to accompany casual sales. Here we may say that any difficulties in obtaining the Spectator should at once be reported to the Manager, The Spectator Office, 13 York Street, London, W.C. 2, who will suggest the best way of putting the matter right.
There is another way of helping the Spectator, which we make no apology for putting before our readers, though to do so may seem somewhat of a departure from what used to be considered journalistic decorum. News- papers under existing conditions are obliged to rely for a considerable part of their revenue upon advertisements. The Spectator is no exception, though it can say with justifiable pride that it would not be extinguished even if it came out without a single advertisement. It is, however, able by using its position as an exceedingly valuable medium for advertisement to give its readers much better paper and print than it could other- wise do. The advertiser is naturally most anxious to discover whether his advertisement is going home. But it is often difficult for him to trace the exact results of particular advertisements. If, then, people who read the advertisements in the Spectator and then order goods, or books, or anything else advertised, would mention, as many constantly do, that they had seen the adv* ertisement in the Spectator, they would be doing us a real service. They would afford proof of what We know is the fact, that advertisements in the Spectator are read as thoroughly as the rest of our columns. We have found that they are read with exceptional care by our very large body of overseas readers. In Bangkok, Northern Rhodesia or Southern Nigeria, and the host of strange and distant places where the Spectator penetrates, the reading of our adver- tisements and of shopping in them, so to speak, is an even better recreation than touring England in an atlas. The post can always actually bring the objects of such shadow shopping.
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