I’ll admit it. I’m something of a contradiction.

In my work for clients, I am constantly exploring the newest ideas in publishing, looking for ways to innovate and adapt. I find that exciting.

At the same time, I thrill to everything old. I love old books, old paper, the old models. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are especially intriguing to me.

So when I came across this Printer’s Dictionary and Guide Book, published in 1892, I just had to snap it up for my collection. Issued by Kelsey Press out of Meriden, Connecticut and priced at 25 cents a copy, the guide is a small, hard cover volume of advice for the would-be printing press operator.

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The sub-title sums it up:

Containing Webster’s spelling and division of the most used words of the English language and chapters on job work, punctuation, useful receipts, etc. Not complete treatises, but a brief, handy guide for every day use, for professional and amateur.

It just so happens that the front and back contain ads for printing services and equipment from Kelsey Press. It’s a clever little piece of marketing, an early information product.

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While most of the advice it contains is now antiquated, some of it is strangely timeless, including these tips on how to start and conduct a small paper:

Arrange a definite plan, to begin with. Give your paper some distinguishing feature, and not follow in the old ruts. If you are personally interested in some particular art, science or sport, you can, if you have energy, make your journal popular among others interested in the same subject. Or a paper can be made popular by making the leading matter village news, wit and humor, puzzles, rebuses, and the like. Church papers help the work much. Subjects are plenty. Choose one to your taste or ability, and make it your specialty. Make your paper alive with that subject, and fill the space not occupied therewith by pleasant miscellany. In a small sheet long, prosy articles appear out of place. It is seldom that a single article occupy more than a page of paper, and a column and a half article should be considered long.

Having perfected your plan for conducting a paper, you choose a name for it, which requires considerable thought. You want one appropriate to your leading subject. Let it be as short and striking as possible. There is much in a name. Whether you propose to circulate the paper free, as an advertisement or otherwise, or to make money out of it, it is best to fix upon it a subscription price; it gives it an apparent value even if given away…

So there you have it. Your “paper” — book, blog, articles — should have a focus that you’re passionate about. Make it your specialty and others with the same passion will be drawn to you. Keep your content and your name short and punchy. Value your work, even if it’s given away for free.

Maybe my love of new and old aren’t such a contradiction after all. A look at where we’ve been can sometimes provide guidance on the road to where we’re going.