Word: profitability
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Continuation of the stabilization fund (created in 1934 out of a $2-billion paper "profit" from the devaluation of the dollar) which is used to protect the exchange value of the dollar from violent fluctuations during crises...
From 1925 to 1936 Publisher de Graff (cousin to smart Publisher Nelson Doubleday) headed Garden City Publishing Co.'s successful Star Dollar Books, sold 15,000,000 reprints at an annual profit of around $70,000. In 1936 he went to Blue Ribbon Books (nonfiction reprints, 98? to $2.49), last year launched the successful Triangle Books (39?) for them. A top-flight book salesman who knows all the tricks of cutting cost corners, Publisher de Graff figures a profit of 1? a copy, on editions of 50,000. To the original publisher he pays royalties of 1? a copy...
...Profit...
Above 2,500 copies, with the plates paid for, the profit goes up. But only half their books sell more than 2,500 copies. Only one in ten sells above 20,000 copies. Roughly, they figure nine duds to one bestseller. Thus, say publishers, their business is part sweepstakes lottery, part humanitarianism...
...Express has 2,466,323, the Herald over 2,000,000). The Sunday News sells 3,464,290 copies, a bare 300,000 less than London's record-holding News of the world.* The News employs 3,500 people, pays them $8,000,000 a year. Its annual profit is usually estimated at around $5,000,000. Its fabulous success is due almost entirely to Publisher Joseph Medill Patterson's unique and highly individualistic application of a saying of Abraham Lincoln's, the last six words of which are chiseled across the front...