Read Any Good Books Lately?

No sooner did the full-page ad for Allen Drury's bestseller Advise and Consent appear in the New York Times last week than telephones started ringing at Publisher Doubleday & Co. and its ad agency, Franklin Spier. How in the world had Doubleday lined up those models? There was Vice President Richard Nixon standing beside an airliner chatting animatedly with Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kennedy. The apparent object of conversation: Advise and Consent, gripped firmly in Nixon's hand.

The answer was simple enough. Both men had been traveling west from Washington last June 19 on a United Air Lines DC-7, were met by reporters during a layover in Chicago. The airline photographer assigned to celebrity duty asked the two men to pose, and handed Nixon the advance copy of Advise and Consent that Kennedy had been reading on the flight. United ran the picture in the October issue of the company's Mainliner magazine, sent a copy to Newsman Drury, who passed it on to Doubleday. The publishers tried a small ad in the Washington Post, then went whole hog with a $4,560 full-page ad in the Times. The effect was as expected. At stores around Manhattan, Advise and Consent sales showed a satisfying jump.

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