Golden Records

Since it first started selling books to U.S. nurseries, New York’s Simon & Schuster, Inc. has learned to respect their buying power. In six years S. & S. sold some 75 million children’s Golden Books (they come in four different sizes, sell from 25¢ up), made them the mainstay of its business.

But Simon & Schuster is well aware that many children would rather listen to stories than read them. Last week S. & S.

brought out its first Golden Records for phonographs (Scuffy the Tugboat, The Poky Little Puppy, etc.), to sell at 29¢ apiece. The first three days enthusiastic parents cleaned out a Los Angeles store’s entire stock of 10,000 records. S. & S. were sure the records would prove as golden as the books.

Its triumph with the tots could not have been more timely. Like all other publishers, S. & S. was having trouble with adult readers ; they simply weren’t buying books on the scale of booming 1946.

Simon & Schuster found that the average mystery book in 1948 hardly sold above 3,500 copies, “poor bestsellers” seldom topped 50,000. At that rate too many books failed to earn their production cost.

One reason why books no longer sold was that readers thought their prices were too high. The publishers, whose costs had soared 60 to 70% in two years, figured that their prices really should go higher. S. & S. reckoned that it made $800 in 1945 on a 10,000 copy printing of a $2.50 book. On the same size printing today it would lose $1,500—even though the book sold for $2.75.

Birth Control. One of the complaints of buyers was that too many trashy books were being brought out. S. & S. agreed. But at a time when five out of every six books were money-losers, few publishers dared take a chance on new authors. Cracked one publisher: “I’ve always believed in birth control for books. When I have weakened, I’ve regretted it.”

Like other publishers, Simon & Schuster has tried to make up its losses by heavy spending to plug bestsellers. It found this policy a risky business. On Gentleman’s Agreement, it allotted 13% of the retail price to advertising, and lost $700 on the first 100,000 copies. The second 100,000 finally put Gentleman’s Agreement into the black.

With such slick tricks as its new records, S. & S. feels sure that it will weather the storm now buffeting bookmen. S. & S.’s two guiding heads, tall, affable Richard L. Simon, 49, and intense, hard-driving M. (for Max) Lincoln Schuster, 51, are a formidable team, bubbling with ideas. In the words of one associate: “Max gets an average of 80 ideas a day; at least one a month is superlative.”

Rebirth. Simon & Schuster started publishing in 1924 with $4,000 in cash and no experience, and scored their first hit with a book of crossword puzzles. Ever since they have scanned the U.S. book mart with a cold, discerning eye. They play down fiction, prefer “authoritative information” to literary excellence, and have published such spectacular moneymakers as Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Simon & Schuster sold out to Marshall Field in 1944, but kept managing control of the company. The two partners are now mulling over another plan to beat down the public’s sales resistance. This fall they expect to issue some books in both cloth-cover and paperbound editions. This double-edition plan helped sell 400,000 copies of Henry Wallace’s 60

Million Jobs—and that, says Simon, “was a very bad book.” This year they hope the records and double editions will boost their gross from $5,500,000 to $7,000,000. But above all, they have confidence in their common touch when it comes to selecting books. Says Schuster: “Our bible is the census, not the Social Register.”