For some time I have felt the need of reaching a certain class of people through the newspaper. The many industries, good and bad, capitalize by advertising their products through the medium of the newspaper. Why shouldn't God's message for a perishing world be attractively advertised so that it may appeal to men and catch the eye of those who read the dailies?
I began by advertising a small twenty-five-cent book, Mary Kennedy's Victory. The title of this book translated from the Italian is The Fortune of Mary Speroni. I presented to the church board a plan of inserting an advertisement for this book in the San Francisco Italian daily newspaper, which has a large circulation in the West. The advertisement was a column wide and two inches deep, and it ran a whole month for only $30.
There was nothing in the advertisement that associated it with religion or sect. The title of the book was in bold type. Then followed a brief description of the contents of the book, and price. To order, interested ones wrote to the American-Italian Literature Company at the specified address. During the first month thirty-five books were ordered.
The second month we advertised The Harked Bible, and in small print Mary Kennedy's Victory again. These books contain much of our message. To better catch the eye, we ran a small cut of the ship on the cover page of the book. Letters came in with stamps, cash, and checks ordering both books. We received thirty-five orders in two weeks after the second advertisement was run.
Two weeks after the book is mailed we follow with a mimeographed card, saying that under a specially arranged plan the American-Italian Literature Company is willing to send free literature for the asking in Italian or English. Now we are receiving comments on the books and requests for readers to be put on the free literature list.
This plan is just newly started, and already we have received replies from five States. By this method we are hand-picking a group of people that will purchase and read our literature, who otherwise could not be reached. Later on we plan to offer a free correspondence lesson plan to those who will purchase a Bible.
This same plan could be started in other large centers of foreign population, as well as in English newspapers. By this means we can sell our literature through the newspaper, and eventually bring some into the truth.
