Advance Pay System by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 3, 1872

Advance Pay System.

By James White

The only proper plan for publishers of periodicals to adopt, in order to secure prompt payment and success, is the strict advance pay system.

All publishers are loth to part with patrons, and there are always a few who will plead to be trusted six months, or a year. The publisher yields to the few, and does not carry out the advance pay plan strictly. In yielding to the few, he has opened the door for many delinquents, and he soon finds that his patrons, whom he has labored to serve faithfully, owe him thousands.

This is our unpleasant experience. There is due the S. D. A. Publishing Association more than Ten Thousand Dollars from delinquent subscribers for the REVIEW AND HERALD, Health Reformer, and Youth's Instructor. This is all wrong. It was an error on our part in complying with the expressed wishes of a few persons asking us to send them our publications on credit, and thus opening the way for so many to become careless in regard to paying honest debts. But the wrong has not been all on our side by any means. The great wrong in this matter has been on the part of those persons who have taken advantage of our willingness to accommodate all, and still retain all our subscribers.

We are now deciding that it would be better never to enter a name on our lists on credit. There are but very few who cannot advance the small sums required for our periodicals one year. And these few had better have them sent to them free the first year than to be in debt. And we design that every subscriber to our periodicals shall pay in advance by January 1, 1873, or the name be stricken from our lists. We therefore call on all delinquents to pay up. And we also ask for the vigilant co-operation of Tract and Missionary Societies in the several States, in this work of placing the subscribers of our several periodicals on the strict advance pay system. We shall send bills of indebtedness to delinquents soon.

When all shall have paid up, then, from that time onward, each subscriber who shall suffer his time to nearly run out will be notified a week or two before the time, for which he has paid, has run out. And if he does not then renew his subscription by paying promptly in advance, the name will be stricken from our lists. This will relieve our Tract and Missionary Societies of much labor, yet we shall want their co-operation, in seeing that all have our publications who should read them, while carrying out the advance pay system; which will make it necessary to cut off more or less names. Pay up delinquents, pay up, and let the Publishing Association have its just due, and save us the trouble of sending bills, and the officers of our Tract and Missionary Societies the trouble of addressing you by letter. Pay up! Pay up!!

JAMES WHITE, Pres. S. D. A. P. A.