Mass-Produced Culture

Three years ago a young book-publishing clerk named George Braziller decided to go into business for himself. He was broke. But he knew of a business where he would not need much money. So he borrowed $25 and started a book club, the Book Find Club.

He picked his own books from those already in print, got the plates from publishers and had the books printed, all on two months' credit. He signed up customers who would take at least four of his selections a year at $1.35 each, pay for them promptly so that Braziller could then pay the publishers. His only expense was the postage on the books.

By last week the profitable Book Find Club had 70,000 members and 70 employes. It was splurging on an advertising campaign, which it hopes will sell $1,250,000 worth of books this year, boost membership to about 100,000.

For these solid business reasons, which have little to do with literature, book clubs are now booming as never before. New ones are being founded on shoestrings no stronger than Braziller's. This year, the 25 U.S. book clubs will sell over 75,000,000 books and gross $100,000,000, one-sixth of all U.S. book sales. The clubs' rapid spread is due primarily to the simple fact that book clubs are the best means yet found to reduce publishing risks to a minimum.

Bonbons & Books. The man who put this golden formula to work in the U.S. is nervous, precise Harry Scherman, 59, a onetime free-lance writer. When he flopped at that, he went into advertising. For a client, he devised a plan to give away pocket-sized classics with each box of candy, was amazed to find later that 1,000,000 classics a year could be sold for 10-c- apiece without candy.

So in 1926 he started the Book-of-the-Month Club to tap this mass market. He rediscovered the ever-new old fact that Americans like to have culture sold to them. He set up a board of five cultural experts, to choose a book a month for B.O.M.C. members. B.O.M.C. now has 900,000 members; they usually pay the regular retail price for books, but get a book free with every two bought, and one for joining. President Scherman can afford the dividend.

Pay Dirt for Authors. He pays publishers 30-c- a copy to lease a book's plates, has the book printed himself. He guarantees publishers minimum royalties of $100,000, often pays much more. Example: he paid Publisher Appleton-Century about $150,000 for Arch of Triumph. The publisher split this fee with Author Erich Maria Remarque, just as all B.O.M.C. royalties are split with authors.

Exactly how much Scherman's club makes is his own trade secret. But the retail value of all books distributed by B.O.M.C. last year, including book dividends, was $25,000,000. Because of the dividends, bookmen guessed that B.O.M.C. did not take in more than $15,000,000. Of this, they estimated that no more than $3,000,000 was spent on advertising, promotion and mailing; another $2,000,000 for royalties; another $5,000,000 to print the books. Bookmen concluded: of the remaining $5,000,000, a substantial chunk was profit.

Nevertheless, energetic Mr. Scherman is not satisfied. This month he will launch a new advertising campaign, which he hopes will boost B.O.M.C. members over 1,000,000, make it the biggest book club in the U.S.

Start a Parade. That title is now claimed by Doubleday's Literary Guild (one of its four clubs), with a reported 1,000,000 members. Doubleday intends to keep its lead. The Guild will be plugged in Montgomery Ward & Co.'s new spring catalogue, along with Doubleday's Dollar Book Club (its 500,000 members get reprints of best-sellers).

This move will bring Montgomery Ward into the literary territory which its old competitor, Sears, Roebuck & Co., has staked out. When goods became scarce during the war, Sears teamed up with Simon & Schuster and Chicago's Consolidated Book Publishing Co. to form he People's Book Club.

By concentrating on Sears's farm customers, P.B.C.'s President Leon Shimkin, ailed Simon & Schuster's "Third S," has run P.B.C.'s membership up to 300,000 fourth biggest). He has also reversed the B.O.M.C. technique. By letting customers pick the books through their own jury panel, Editor Shimkin expects to keep in better touch with what they want, hopes to catch up with the leaders.

Because of their vast success, book clubs have raised fears that books may soon be tailored less to art than to the requirements of the clubs' mass audience. That tendency is already obvious in the tremendous sales of trashy or second-rate books. But bookmen also argue that if clubs keep springing up there will soon be a club for every taste. And no one denies that clubs, by selling books to those who never bought before, have expanded the market enormously. Before the clubs began, there were only 1,000,000 people in the U.S. who bought books regularly. Now, in the clubs alone, there are 3,000,000.

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