If it please ony man spirituel or temporel to bye our pyes of two or thre comemoracio’s of Salisburi use, emprynted after the form of this prese’t letre, whiche ben wel and truly correct, late hym come to Westmonester, into the almonestrye at the reed pole and he shal haue them good and chepe:
Supplico stet cedula.
Foreigners appear to have appreciated the boon of this kind of advertising equally rapidly, although, from the fugitive nature of such productions, copies of their posters are rarely to be found. Still an interesting list of books, printed by Coburger at Nuremberg in the fifteenth century, is preserved in the British Museum, to which is attached the following heading: “Cupientes emere libros infra notatos venient ad hospitium subnotatum,” &c.—i.e., “Those who wish to buy the books hereunder mentioned, must come to the house now named,” &c. The Parisian printers soon went a step further. Long before the invention of the typographic art, the University had compelled the booksellers to advertise in their shop windows any new manuscripts they might obtain. But after the invention of printing they soon commenced to proclaim the wonderful cheapness of the works they produced. It did not strike them, however, that this might have been done effectually on a large scale, and they were content to extol the low price of the work in the book itself. Such notices as the following are common in early books. Ulric Gering, in his “Corpus Juris Canonici,” 1500, allays the fear of the public with a distich:—“Don’t run away on account of the price,” he says. “Come rich and poor; this excellent work is sold for a very small sum:”—
Berthold Remboldt subjoins to his edition of “S. Bruno on the Psalms,” 1509, the information that he does not lock away his wares (books) like a miser, but that anybody can carry them away for very little money.