engleski

Book advertising in "Novine horvatzke", the first newspaper in Croatian language

When newspapers started their history on the territory of Croatia in the early 19th century, their potential in advertising was immediately recognized. Among advertisements for various products, goods and services, newspaper readers could also find book advertisements. Newspapers could best trace the rapidly growing production of books due to the shorter time needed for their printing than the bookstore catalogues that had been commonly used at that time. The main aim of the present paper is therefore to examine the extent to which printers, publishers, bookstore owners and authors used Novine horvatzke, the first newspaper in Croatian language, for advertising purposes. The selected book advertisements were analyzed from the quantitative (annual publication frequency of book ads), the form and content (types of bibliographic information identified in book ads), as well as the graphic perspective (graphic design of book ads). As we were limited to the first twenty-five years of the newspapers’ publishing life (newspapers are even today known as Narodne novine), the aim of this research was to investigate what types of bibliographic information (author, title, place of publication, printer/publisher/bookstore owner, book content, prices, and book format) had been considered the most important when selling a book in the time span analyzed. The second aim was also to examine the extent to which the 19th century newspapers had been recognized as the important marketing medium. In addition, one of the goals of the present study was also to detect in what way the book ads examined had resembled the contemporary way of book advertising. The authors conclude that the book advertisements were partly similar to the contemporary way of book advertising since almost all of them included the title and author information in the ads, but only occasionally information on book content similar to the ones we have nowadays. Other bibliographic information appeared in the ads irregularly. It can be concluded from this that the publishers/printers and bookstore owners were still insufficiently prepared for this kind of book advertising, which confirms previous known findings drawn upon some other newspapers.

book ads, bookselling, marketing, Novine horvatzke, newspapers, 19th century

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