shadow of britain

Chapter 215 Promotional Techniques in Journalism

At night, in Arthur's house.

Shareholders and writers of the "British" magazine gathered together, and Disraeli carefully reviewed the manuscripts in his hand one by one.

After a long time, he pressed the thick stack of manuscripts on the table with a smile on his face, and took a deep breath: "To be honest, I really can't think of a reason why this magazine failed. Every one of them The novels are masterpieces and would have attracted legions of loyal readers even if they had been published separately. But now they are bound together. In my opinion, eightpence per issue is still too cheap. Maybe we can set the price a little higher? After all, our magazine is almost as big as three issues of The Times."

Disraeli was worried about raising the price even before it was released. Arthur obviously had a different view on this.

Because for him, making money from the newspaper industry is secondary, and his top priority is to establish a public opinion position through "The Brit" and continuously expand his voice.

And since he had just received a financing of [-] pounds from the Rothschild family, at this time, he didn't care about losing a large sum of money in the early stage 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 everyone give up their worries about losing money.

Arthur didn't show his intentions first, but tactfully threw out a strange argument: "Whether newspapers and magazines make money doesn't actually depend on the income generated by sales, just like when I was a frontline patrolman in Scotland Yard. Judging from my feelings over a period of time, many newspapers with a large sales volume are actually not doing well. Sometimes, the greater the sales volume, the more the newspaper loses money.”

"Oh? What's going on here?"

Although Disraeli had run a newspaper before, he was just a hands-off shopkeeper at that time, otherwise he would not have been defrauded out of seven thousand pounds.

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

Others were also interested in what Arthur said.

Alexandre Dumas asked directly: "If newspapers don't make money from sales, how else can they make money? Is it possible to steal and defraud newspapers?"

When Arthur heard this, he didn't answer directly, but said to Dickens, a long-time news reporter.

"Charles, you have worked as a reporter for several newspapers, so you should know that after deducting the printing and distribution costs of a newspaper, the profit each newspaper can make is usually very little.

However, the larger the newspaper, the more it needs to maintain a large team of reporters, or pay high remuneration to hire big-name professional writers.Only in this way can they get first-hand information faster than other newspapers and obtain high-quality articles.

And these behaviors will also cause them to spend more and more on personnel and content costs, until they can no longer maintain a balance of payments and can only go bankrupt.Therefore, in order to fill this hole, large literary magazines and newspapers will introduce the concept of advertising space.

For those truly large-scale news media, the money from selling magazines can cover their expenses. Their main profit comes from advertising revenue.I should be right about this, right? "

Dickens looked at Arthur with wide eyes in surprise, and he said in surprise: "Arthur, I thought you were just an excellent police officer, but I didn't expect you to know so much about the ecology of the news magazine industry."

Arthur smiled helplessly: "Actually, it's not me who understands, but Mr. Hetherington who founded the "Poor Guardian". I just chatted with him a few days ago, and he told me these things Yes. He also said that because the "Guardian of the Poor" is determined not to accept any advertisements, even though tens of thousands of copies can be sold every day, it is still unable to make a profit in the end."

"Hetherington?" Elder's head popped out of the magazine wrapped in a book cover: "I heard that he was arrested last month, wasn't he? How could he be released so quickly?"

Alexandre Dumas took a sip of coffee and said in a moderate tone: "Elder, if you have nothing to do, use your brain. Guess how Hetherington was arrested?"

Elder raised his eyebrows, pulled the corners of his mouth and laughed loudly: "Arthur, damn it, why was Hetherington arrested for no reason? Everyone said that his usual whereabouts are very covert. It turns out that it was your boy who did that, and now everything makes sense. After all, you are probably the only one in Scotland Yard who has this ability."

When Arthur heard this, he just said calmly: "Elder, don't get me wrong, the LPS has no power to arrest the target, and it is the Tower Hamlets Police District of Scotland Yard who made the arrest. And most importantly, Herr Mr Thurrington accepted Scotland Yard's arrest voluntarily."

"Accept arrest voluntarily?" Alexandre Dumas frowned and asked, "Why? Did Hetherington drink too much water from the Thames River? Or did he suddenly suffer from some evil disease that he likes to be imprisoned?"

"Nothing." Arthur replied: "I just said a few words to him."

"What did you say to him?" Arthur put down his teacup: "I told him that he was charged this time because the Tory government felt the threat of public opinion from the Poor Guardian, and this time he was accused The crime is also very light, just not paying stamp duty normally.

In addition, the Tory Party was in turmoil at that time, and most London citizens were dissatisfied with the cabinet. Therefore, even if the case was filed, it might not be supported by the magistrates' court and jury, so there was a high probability that they would not receive a guilty verdict.

So instead of fleeing London to prove his guilt, which would lead to a trial in absentia, he might as well follow Scotland Yard directly to the magistrates' court.

Oh, by the way, I also mentioned to him that Mr. William Corbett, who founded the "Poor People's Political Monthly", attacked stamp duty and satirized government corruption, and was sentenced to two years in prison in the name of defamation.As a result, after he was released from prison, the sales volume of "Poor People's Political Monthly" has not decreased but increased, and it can sell more than [-] copies every month.

While I wouldn't encourage Mr Hetherington to follow Mr Corbett's lead, I can't say he's breaking the law if he does market it.Go in and squat for a month, it's like gilding the newspaper.

When the "Poor Guardian" is published in the future, Mr. Hetherington can also proudly add a line at the beginning of the newspaper-the founder of this newspaper has been in prison, brackets, unfortunately, the sentence is slightly shorter than that of Mr. Corbett shorter. "

Dickens was still worried about Hetherington's situation, but after listening to Arthur's words, he not only let go of his suspense, but also couldn't help joking: "In this way, in order to increase the sales of "The Brit" , we can also consider selecting a suitable candidate to send in?"

Arthur blinked when he heard this. He took out the quick handcuffs hanging on his belt and threw them on the table.

"Because of work, I can't go to prison for the time being, but I can help you take a fast track. Which of you is willing to sacrifice yourself?"

Dumas raised his elbow and poked Elder: "It's up to you."

Elder glared at Dumas when he heard this: "Damn it, Alexander, don't get the relationship wrong. You have to go to prison first before you can be sent to the Royal Navy, and I am already at the later stage of this stage."

Arthur nodded when he heard the words: "Alexander, Elder is right. And sending this kid to prison doesn't need to be accused of slander like Mr. Corbett. I have a bunch of information about His case."

Darwin couldn't help laughing out loud when he heard this.

Unexpectedly, Elder saw him smiling and couldn't help but glared: "Charles, why do you have the nerve 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."

Unexpectedly, upon hearing this, the Red Devil put his hand on Arthur's shoulder and said with a smirk, "Betrayal of God? Oh, my dear Arthur, there must be another one of us who betrayed God here?"

Arthur ignored him and spoke to Disraeli, who was deep in thought: "So now, Benjamin, you should understand that it is basically impossible to make a profit by selling newspapers. We can only expand sales. Attracting enough investment from advertisers can ensure the healthy development of the magazine.

And if we want to increase sales, blindly increasing pricing is not feasible.Perhaps for the upper classes, a penny more and a penny less than the price of a magazine makes no difference.But for the middle class who are careful about their budget, or ordinary workers with average financial status, every time the price increases, we will lose a group of readers. "

Disraeli looked a bit struggling: "You can say that, but even if you don't consider the initial profitability. But you also have to consider the vanity of the middle class. Sometimes the magazine price is too low. It will make them think that reading our magazines is out of style.

We can't really sell a penny issue like The Poor's Guardian?They don't have to pay stamp duty, so they can naturally keep the cost down, but if we sell it for three pennies, even if the printing cost is not counted, we have to pay back two pennies per copy. This is not the case in business! "

Arthur thought for a while, then suddenly asked with a smile: "So, Benjamin, have you ever thought about tiered pricing?"

Disraeli asked puzzled, "What is tiered pricing?"

Arthur said: "It's easy to understand, that is, for the upper and middle class, we adopt a normal pricing strategy. At the same time, we can also delay for a few weeks to release some products targeted at second-hand bookstores or second-hand vendors on the street. Ordinary workers' magazines, these magazines must be cheaper than the original ones.

Of course, in order to expand our popularity, maybe we can also provide some free magazines to those full-time tavern newspaper readers. Long-term serialized novels like ours will definitely be very popular among newspaper readers.Also, I have to mention that I have a concert at the Coburg Theater this weekend.

If you can print the first issue of the magazine before the concert, I think you can give a small gift to the guests after the concert. I believe those gentlemen and ladies with strong spending power will definitely appreciate it. We are very interested in fashion novels. "

Disraeli's eyes lit up when he heard this. He tapped his fingers on the table and said with a smile: "Yes... this thing is like laudanum. I can guarantee that as long as they finish reading the first issue, they will definitely think Here’s another bottle.”

(End of this chapter)