The Press: Good-Will Edition

An outstandingly successful phenomenon of U. S. publishing is Reader’s Digest, which was modestly launched 18 years ago—with the idea of reprinting condensations of worthwhile articles—and today has a circulation of 3,200,000 copies. With no advertising but with a simple format and a substantial price (25¢ a copy) it became a highly profitable enterprise in the hands of its editor-owners DeWitt and Lila Bell Acheson Wallace.

From their profits as the years went by, Mr. & Mrs. Wallace not only increased the thickness of Reader’s Digest. They began making substantial payments to magazines whose articles they reprinted, began sending extra checks to the authors of those articles and finally even commissioned free-lance writers to prepare original articles which they either printed or presented to other magazines and “reprinted.”

Reader’s Digest went further and began publishing Braille and phonographic editions of itself for the blind. Since Reader’s Digest pays over the entire subscription price of these editions (paid for, in many cases, by regular subscribers) to the American Printing House for the Blind, Inc., it amounts to a philanthropic enterprise.

Last week Reader’s Digest announced that it would put out still another edition as a matter of public service. Because many a foreign reader had written in saying that the magazine gave him a new understanding of U. S. life and motives, Editor Wallace decided to publish a special edition in Spanish to promote good will among the American republics—a project which won enthusiastic approval from the State Department.

The Spanish edition will include some articles from Latin-American periodicals. To promote circulation its subscription price will be only $1 a year (price of the U. S. edition: $3), not enough to cover printing and distribution costs. Unlike the U. S. edition, however, the Spanish edition will take advertising. But even with advertising, it is expected to lose $35,000 to $50,000 the first year and, even if it eventually attains a circulation of 200,000 or more, is never expected to make ends meet.

Said Secretary of State Cordell Hull: “I am pleased. . . .”