Word: zevin
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...Atlas who hopes to push World to a top place in the reprint business is small, owlish, President Benjamin D. Zevin, 44. A New Yorker and ex-advertising man, Ben Zevin got into the book business by marriage, into mass distribution of reprints by pondering on old jokes...
After his own ad agency folded in 1925, Zevin became business manager of Daily Food News. When that folded too, Zevin joined World Publishing, then headed by his father-in-law, Alfred Cahen. World was mass-producing cheap Bibles, dictionaries and one-volume Shakespeares as retailers' premiums. Zevin felt that people would buy cheap books even when they did not come with coffee and hair dye. But he felt, with the late Al Smith, that there was a catch in it: "Who the hell ever goes into a bookstore...
...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...