At the same time the publisher finds, and can find, no better medium than a good live book page or book section; nor can he find any other medium, nor can any other medium be created, in which his advertising will reach his full audience. “The trade” reads the excellent _Publishers’ Weekly_, librarians have the journal of the American Library Association, readers have the newspapers and magazines of general circulation on which they rely for the news of new books. But the good book page or book section reaches all these groups. Publishers, authors, booksellers, librarians, book buyers--all read it. And if it is really good it spreads the book-reading habit. Even a bookshop seldom does that--we have one exception in mind, pretty well known. People do not, ordinarily, read in a bookshop. Of course a literary editor who has any regard for the vitality of his page or section is interested in book advertising. There’s something wrong with him if he isn’t. If he isn’t he doesn’t measure up to his job, which is to get people to read books and find their way about among them. A book page or a book section without advertising is no more satisfactory than a man or a woman without a sense of the value of money. It looks lopsided and it is lopsided. Readers resent it, and rightly. It’s a beautiful façade, but the side view is disappointing. The interest the literary editor takes in book advertising need no more be limited than the interest he takes in the growth or improvement of any other feature of his page or section. It has and can have no relation to his editorial or news policy. The moment such a thing is true his usefulness is ended. An alliance between the pen and the pocketbook is known the moment it is made and is transparent the moment it takes effect in print. A literary editor may resent, and keenly, as an editor, the fact that Bing, Bang & Company do not advertise their books in his domain. He is quite right to feel strongly about it. It has nothing to do with his handling of the Bing Bang books. That is determined by their news value alone. He may give the Bing Bang best seller a front page review and at the same time decline to meet Mr. Bing or lunch with Mr. Bang. And he will be entirely honest and justified in his course, both ways. Puff & Boom advertise like thunder. The literary editor likes them both immensely, or, at least, he appreciates their good judgment (necessarily it seems good to him in his rôle as editor of the pages they use). But Puff & Boom’s books are one-stick stories. Well, it’s up to Puff & Boom, isn’t it? Oh, well, first and last there’s a lot to being a literary editor, new style. But first and last there’s a lot to being a human. Any one who can be human successfully can do the far lesser thing much better than any literary editor has yet done it. WHAT EVERY PUBLISHER KNOWS VI WHAT EVERY PUBLISHER KNOWS