Word: zevin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Zevin brought out 49? clothbound reprints (Tower Books) for sale in 5-&-10? stores. They sold so well that he tried a $1 line (Forum Books) for sale in chain stores and bookstores, which also caught...
Picnics & Productivity. To make money on cheap books, Zevin cut production costs by virtually eliminating all hand labor in printing, binding and packing. He stepped up productivity of his 500 employes, 125 of them Negroes (including several foremen, one executive) by high wages mixed with paternalism, i.e., picnics, parties, and Sunday morning baseball games on his twelve-acre estate...
...Zevin's real break was paper rationing. His paper quota was high (10,-500,000 lbs. a year) and his big premium business had melted away. This left him enough paper to expand. While most publishers were curtailing their output of titles, Ben Zevin expanded, picking up best-sellers as other publishers were forced to drop them. One bit of trade gossip: World published Gypsy Rose Lee's G-String Murder on paper alloted for Bibles. This year World sold 13,000,000 volumes, grossed $6,350,000 to become one of the nation's biggest reprint...
Forward to Originals. Now in the reprint business "to stay," Ben Zevin plans a full-scale invasion of the "original" field next year (sample: a life of Bing Crosby, by his brother Ted; F.D.R. Speaks, edited by Ben Zevin). Most ambitious project, scheduled for 1947: a 25-lb. folio Bible designed by Bruce Rogers, No. 1 U.S. book designer, to sell for about...
...long-established publishers were unimpressed, still looked on Ben Zevin as an upstart Bible and dictionary printer with more ambition than literary know-how. The war for the cheap book market is just beginning...