Why the Ledger? About 1,900 paid copies a week, and they get read. A Ledger sits on the kitchen table from Thursday to Thursday, gets read by everybody in the house, and gets passed to the neighbors after that. Nobody throws one away until the next one comes. If you sell something people in this end of the county buy, this is where they'll see it.

A column inch is one column wide and one inch deep. A business-card ad, two columns by three inches, is six column inches: $31.50 at the open rate, $24.60 on a year's contract.

Page specials (open rate, any week): full page $595, half page $310, quarter page $160.

Spot color: we can add one color, usually red, on certain pages for $75 an ad. Reserve it by the Friday before.

We'll set your ad for you, free. Bring in your copy, your logo and a rough idea, or just tell us what you want to say. Proofs are ready Tuesday morning; stop in to look, or we'll read it to you over the phone. Camera-ready ads are welcome too.

Phone numbers count as one word. So does a town. Garage sale ads come with two cardboard signs, free, if you pick them up at the office.

Preprinted inserts (your own flyers, folded into every paper): $35 per thousand. The full run is about 1,950. Inserts must be at the office by Tuesday noon.

Billing. Local businesses with an account are billed at the end of the month. Everybody else pays when the ad is placed. There's no sales tax. This is Montana.

Political ads are paid in advance and must say who paid for them, as state law requires. We take them from every candidate and every side at the same rate, and we don't take them the week of the election from anybody who didn't advertise before, so nobody gets the last word without an answer.

Mistakes. If we make a mistake in your ad, we run it again correctly, free. If you make a mistake in your copy, we run it again at half price, because we should have caught it.

Tear sheets are free. Ask and we'll set one aside for you.

We reserve the right to turn down any ad, and we have, about twice in twenty years.