Fawcett v. Macfadden

There is just so much room on a newsstand. The more space a magazine gets on that stand, the more copies it is likely to sell. Preferred position is along the front of the stand, and lately the heavy-selling picture magazines have been crowding into those limited positions, upsetting some established applecarts and setting the nerves of most magazine circulation people on edge. When conditions are toughest, not the least uncommon trade practice of many magazines is to send representatives from stand to stand, shoving competitors' products aside, bringing their own magazines to the forefront. These tactics can drastically affect sales of magazines, but the newsstand operator, to whom one magazine sale means about as much as another and who is used to having the magazine representatives do his merchandising for him anyhow, never does much about it.

Last week, however, thrice-married W. H. ("Captain Billy") Fawcett of True Confessions and Bernarr Macfadden of True Story were doing plenty about it in one of the nastiest newsstand fights since the two were at each other's throats in

1934. True Confessions has been growing at a great rate for two years, pushing above the million mark. True Story has also grown, to 2,300,000, is a big Macfadden moneymaker. When it learned that Mr. Fawcett had managed a publicity tie-up with Paramount on Carole Lombard's picture True Confession, Mr. Macfadden's True Story looked briskly to its circulation laurels. True Confessions, with $15,000 spent in exploitation, ordered several hundred thousand more February copies than it had been selling, put them on sale December 24, six days early. But by last week Mr. Fawcett and his True Confessions were a pretty disillusioned pair, and did not hesitate to show it in a startling newspaper advertisement run in six cities: "Don't let anything prevent you from buying your February True Confessions. . . . If anyone should try to persuade you for any reason not to purchase the February issue . . . call our representative."

In a fine state of agitation, True Confessions was trying to collect evidence that True Story has become too enthusiastic about what ordinarily passes as innocent trade practice. Mr. Macfadden's True Story has 265 boy sales organizers who double as field representatives to see that the magazine is properly displayed on newsstands. On its regular force True Confessions employs only about a dozen field representatives, having no boy sales organization. In a long message to wholesalers last week, True Confessions complained that "organizers have been covering up copies of True Confessions on the newsstands . . . and have . . . thrown them in the dealers' return bin."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.