More for Their Money

On his book-selling jaunts around the U.S., Simon & Schuster's stooped, hulking President Richard L. Simon often buys books himself, scorning the discount dealers offer him. "I want to pay the full price," says Simon, "so I'll know after I read a book whether I got my money's worth. Most of the time I don't get it."

Last week Reader Simon unwrapped a plan to give other readers more for their money. Five new books on the S. & S. spring list will be published in the regular $2.75 to $3.50 clothbound editions, and simultaneously in a far bigger edition of paperbound copies to sell for $1. The firm's reasoning: mass sales of cheaper books, by creating word-of-mouth advertising, will help sell the costlier copies.

Simon & Schuster tried $1 editions back in the Depression, but the public "thought that anything that cheap must not be any good," says Simon. But in 1943 Wendell Willkie's One World, published simultaneously in cheap and higher-priced editions, sold so phenomenally (1,400,000) that S. & S. decided to try further experiments in combined editions. These worked so well that S. & S. is willing to risk $100,000 on its new venture, and if it proves out, will broaden it over more of their list. "The bookseller," says Dick Simon, "will no longer have to apologize for the high price of reading."

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