Jacob Smith, writing in the Journal of Children and Media in 2010, argues that Bubble Books entered the market just at the time women�s role in the household was changing and their performance as mothers was being judged in new ways.- Mothers were increasingly busy and time-pressured, and were looking for new ways to both educate their children and keep them amused.- The advertising campaign for Bubble Books incorporated these messages, targeting children, mothers and retailers.- At the same time, the campaign was educating retailers that children were an important � and continuing � source of business.

Retail advertisements were placed in newspapers, women's and children's magazines (such as The Ladies' Home Journal, Woman's Home Companion, St. Nicholas Magazine, John Martin's Book, etc.) along with general interest magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and the Quality Group (World's Work, Scribner's, The Century, The American Review of Reviews, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's Magazine), a group of magazines targeting the most affluent (see ad in The Atlantic Monthly at left).- Ads appeared in almost every issue of Harper's Magazine from December, 1917 through December, 1922, not surprising, since it was also published by Harper & Brothers.- Youth's Companion was also part of the marketing campaign -- this magazine used Bubble Books as a premium that subscribers could earn as a reward for signing up other people as subscribers (see page at left).- The books were also included in the mail-order catalogs of Montgomery Ward from 1919 through 1922. -(There is an interesting error in the Montgomery Ward catalogs of 1919 -- catalogs #91 and #92.- Those catalogs include a Bubble Book #9 titled "Topsy Turvy" that was to have included tunes called, "Owl and the Pussy Cat," "The Fox and the Goose" and "The Fly and the Bumble Bee."- Book #9 actually became "The Merry Midget," which had similar, but different songs.)

There were many other components of the marketing campaign in addition to advertising by Harper directly.- In the U.S., for example, sales of Bubble Books were being stimulated by child actors from New York hired to participate in organized Bubble Book parties around the country (see just three examples of these newspaper advertisements for the parties at left).- These parties were apparently the inspiration of children in Patterson, New Jersey who asked their parents to make them costumes of the characters.- Harper & Brothers learned of their idea and created a play in which the children take the part of the characters from the books (see this December 25, 1920 ad in Dry Goods Economist), which they put on in various types of venues throughout the country (including "one of the biggest theatres in New York City").- According to Frank Andrews, writing in the Winter 2001 issue of Hillandale News, one party in Omaha, Nebraska was reported to have attracted over 1,000 children.- And in London, Hodder and Stoughton organized a window-dressing competition for dealers in the fall of 1921.- (See also the record sleeve at left from an English record and phonograph dealer advertising their Bubble Book specialty.)- Harper & Brothers attended trade shows to spark interest in the books among attendees: The Toy Fair in New York City from February 7 through March 12, 1921 (featuring a Bubble Book Party every afternoon in the Bubble Book Theatre at Bush Terminal Sales Building, 130 W. 42nd Street, the location of the Bubble Books sales organization; see ad) and an August, 1922 national merchandise fair attended by hundreds of wholesalers, covered in the trade press (see article in The Music Trade Review, August 19, 1922 at left).- At the end of 1922 or in 1923, the Bubble Book sales offices moved to Franklin Square, and Harper launched a direct mail campaign, citing at least two million books sold (see letter at left).

In 1923, trade ads in Talking Machine World were suggesting that dealers hold a "Bubble Book Hour" in their store to drive traffic and sales in their store during off hours, and also mentioned that the songs and stories were being broadcast on the radio.- And at least one ad (Child Life, December 1923) tells parents to ask about Bubble Book Hours in any good phonograph, department, or book store.- Huge numbers of ads for Bubble Books began to appear in newspapers around the country and abroad, some from stores letting people know they had the books for sale (see, for example, the ad from the Manchester Guardian at left), or were having a "Bubble Book Party" as described above.- Other media mentions included the daily newspaper program listings from the high-powered radio station WJZ in Newark, New Jersey.- This station ran weekly broadcasts (generally 30-minutes on Sundays at 6:30pm) featuring readings and recordings from the Bubble Books, which could be picked up throughout the country because of the power of its signal.- I have found listings for these broadcasts from April 2, 1922 through July 13, 1924 (see the last radio program listing that I know about at left), which is well into the Victor era described below.- I also have correspondence written by children to Ralph Mayhew in care of WJZ that dates the radio show as late as April 1925.

The success of Bubble Books also stimulated sales of phonographs and other records.- Bubble Books led some types of stores that had never carried either books or phonographs before to bring in both -- expanding people's access to recorded music.- It was also reported that people who had no interest in purchasing phonographs for themselves needed one to play the Bubble Book records for their children -- and some then became enamoured with recorded sound and purchased other records for themselves.- And in some cases, people with expensive phonographs didn't want their children playing with them, and so they bought a cheaper model for the children to use themselves.- At least two companies developed phonographs explicitly tied to Bubble Books, Victor (the Victor Victrola 1-2 pictured at left and described below), and the Plaza Music Company (The Kiddiepact, which was manufactured in many colors with different decals from the Bubble Book series, also pictured at left).

By September 1924 the copyright and patents had been acquired by the Victor Talking Machine Company (see The Music Trade Review report on the acquisition and a postcard showing the factory at left), which was quite pleased to tell its dealers that this meant there would be no competition from the Harper Columbia version (see article from Voice of the Victor, September 1924, at left).- In fact, it appears the remaining stock of Harper Bubble Books were being sold off for 25¢ during at least one massive sale, according to a Gimbel Brothers ad that appeared in the New York Times on September 11, 1924 (see left).- Victor then produced a series of six Bubble Books, each of which contained two of the original Bubble Books and were sold for $2.00 (see description at left on glassine paper; original use of this paper is unknown).- These books were oversized in comparison to the Harper Columbia series, measuring 9½" x 7¾".- The three bound-in sleeves each contained double-sided records (rather than the single-sided records of the Harper Columbia series), and these records were also oversized in comparison, measuring 7" (rather than the 5½" of the original).- Ralph Mayhew had just received a patent for another method of mounting records into books (see patent at left), but that method was not used by Victor.- Sales of the books, at least initially, must have exceeded Victor's expectations since they speeded up production of the fifth and sixth books to have them available in time for holiday sales (see article in The Music Trade Review at left).- (The eighth and ninth original Bubble Books were not included in the Victor series, but the reason for this omission is unknown.)

The records in this version were also recorded acoustically, just like the Harper Columbia series.- (There is some confusion on this point, but see the footnote in the 1927 Victor Records catalog listing at left for the definitive answer.)-