Publisher advertising: A legitimate complaint

Abstract

Publisher advertising is often a source of frustration for acquisitions librarians and collection development specialists. Common complaints are that advertising does not contain enough of the necessary information, or that it excludes vital information, or that it includes misleading information. Many groups have addressed this problem, and two standards exist to help the librarian. The Federal Trade Commission’s Guides for the Law Book Industry (commonly known as the FTC guidelines) are found in the Code of Federal Regulations [l]. They were promulgated in 1975 following more than eighty years of activism by the American Bar Association (ABA), the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and other groups. The immediate impetus for their creation, however, came from a 1969 article by Raymond Taylor entitled Luwbook Consumers Need Protection [2]. This article helped to launch an investigation by the FTC into the practices of the law book industry. In 1970 the ABA formed a Special Committee on Lawbook Publishing Practices to study the problem, and other groups joined the act by forming committees and issuing guidelines [3]. In 1973 the FTC proposed a set of guides and received over 500 responses to the proposal [4]. The seventeen Guides for the Law Book Industry were promulgated on August 8, 1975 and became effective on April 8, 1976 [5]. Lawbook publishers thus became part of a small group of industries that the FTC had chosen to regulate through guides to fair practice. Such guides are not law but are the commission’s interpretation of the laws it administers. Another article by Raymond Taylor entitled New Protection for Lawbook Users summarizes the major provisions of the guides and includes their full text [6]. The guidelines are intended to ensure that a prospective purchaser has “accurate and truthful information readily available” so that the consumer can make an informed decision about whether to buy something or not. The guidelines include a set of definitions and a list of disclosures that are required on all advertising about industry products, including direct mail promotional materials, oral representations and catalogs. Second-hand and used law materials are specifically excluded from the guidelines. Generally such advertising must contain the name and address of the publisher, full title of the work, author, copyright date and whether