DW knew from his days as a wine merchant the importance of publicity.
A novelty in its day, DW arranged for two thousand promotional postcards to be printed, featuring the map from the book's pictorial endpapers. These went down so well that Hutchinsons arranged an additional print run.
DW also wrote to a number of his former clients, friends and acquaintances letting them know that he had just written a book, and asking them to recommend it to their friends and to ask for it in their Libraries. DW kept copies of all these letters and about fifty of these copies still survive.
As a final touch, DW did something that was virtually unheard of in his day - he visited bookshops. While this is normal practice today, at the time it was a real innovation. After a drink with the manager of the bookshop at Kings Cross station, that store alone sold seven hundred copies.
