McBook: The Reader's Digest Condensed Books Franchise Evert Volkersz

DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace began publishing the Reader's Digest magazine in 1921. In the spring of 1950 their Reader's Digest Association launched the Reader's Digest Condensed Books direct-mail subscription series. More than 213 volumes have been published, as well as many other series and sets of condensed books. The Condensed Books series holds a unique and ubiquitous book publishing franchise that has vanquished all competitors. Like many other franchises, the Condensed Books are sold directly to the consumer, have a consistent and standardized format and quality, are mass-marketed, heavily promoted, and a popular product. he continuous publication of the Reader's Digest C o n d e n s e d Books directmail subscription series since 1950 is a cultural p h e n o m e n o n . A l t h o u g h the elite disdain both the Reader's Digest magazine a n d the C o n d e n s e d Books, they probably represent the most successful magazine a n d serial b o o k publishing p r o g r a m s in history in terms of readers a n d profits. The C o n d e n s e d Books story is an u n d o c u m e n t e d chapter in our u n d e r s t a n d i n g of c o n t e m p o r a r y authorship, publishing, reading, and retail distribution networks, such as directmail m a r k e t i n g and b o o k clubs. This article focuses on the United States edition of the Reader's Digest C o n d e n s e d Books) The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., was f o u n d e d by DeWitt a n d Lila Acheson Wallace w h e n t h e y launched the Reader's Digest in 1922. DeWitt Wallace, w h o died in 1981, a n d Lila Acheson Wallace, w h o died in 1984, were childless. The c o m p a n y was privately o w n e d until it w e n t public by selling n o n v o t i n g stock to the public in 1990. Two f o u n d a t i o n s n o w hold most of the v o t i n g s t o c k the DeWitt Wallace Reader's Digest F u n d a n d the Lila Acheson Wallace Reader's Digest Fund. The Reader's Digest is primarily a business story, rather than a publishing story. The few articles p u b l i s h e d about the c o m p a n y generally focus on its business aspects. In Fortune magazine's 1994 ranking of the 500 largest corporations, based on 1993 figures, the Reader's Digest Association ranks 166, with total sales of $2.8 billion. C o m p a n i e s w i t h similar sales include Sherwin-Wil-

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Evert Volkersz is a librarian at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 1993, he coedited and contributed to the Long Island Book Collectors Journal 5. This is a slightly expanded version of a paper presented to the Second Annual Conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) at the Center for the Book, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, July 1994. Address for correspondence: 15 Bowen Place, Stony Brook, NY 11790-2629. Email: [email protected]

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liams, Maytag, Owens-Corning, Hormel Foods, Hasbro, and Pennzoil (Fortune April 18, 1994: 226). In Fortune's grouping of twenty publishing and printing companies, the Reader's Digest Association placed fourth, after R. R. Donnelley & Sons, Times Mirror, and Gannett. It was ahead of Knight-Ridder, McGrawHill, and the New York Times (Fortune April 18, 1994: 272). The Reader's Digest Association is a global publisher of books, magazines, music, and video. In 1993, the magazines earned 28 percent of revenues, music 14 percent, and video 5 percent. The book division, which earned 49 percent of revenues, is reported to be the most profitable unit (Reader's Digest Association 1993: 2). The company has a reputation for paying generous salaries and is listed in The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America (Levering et al. 1984: 305307). Despite the company's size and pervasive influence, the few scholarly articles about Reader's Digest focus primarily on the editorial content of the Digest. Especially in its earlier days, it was difficult to separate the presence of DeWitt Wallace from the editorial aspects and its overwhelming publishing success. Only six monographic studies focus either on the Digest itself or on the company. One of these studies is in German (Roeder 1954) and one is in French (Baylon 1988).2 The other four books include Bainbridge's series of articles first published in the New Yorker (1946), Christian Science Monitor reporter James Playsted Wood's hagiography of Wallace (1967), Schreiner's informative, but ultimately unrevealing account by a former insider (1977), and John Heidenry's excellent Theirs Was the Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the Story of the 'Reader's DigesL" published in 1993. Although Heidenry's story focuses on the Wallaces, he takes a critical look at the company. The early success of the company stems from DeWitt Wallace's apparently unerring talent for sensing mass reading tastes. He created a new form of abridgement, which he called a 'condensation,' and which he published in the Digest's unique physical format with its distinctive typographic style. In addition, as the Digest became quite profitable, Wallace gathered around him a staff that mixed experienced professionals with capable people lacking previous editing and publishing experience. Although personnel costs were high, there was little direct capital investment, as printing and mailing was done by contract. 3 Subsequent success came when Reader's Digest combined its editorial power with sophisticated and highly successful direct marketing techniques. Much of the credit is due to Walter H. Weintz, who had previously worked for the Book-of-the-Month Club. He was employed by Reader's Digest for twelve years, from 1946 to 1958, and designed and tested many mail-order techniques and campaigns (Weintz 1987). He started the development of a unique and completely proprietary mailing list for the Digest, partially to save money by avoiding duplicate names. Although manual at first, the mailing list continues to evolve. It has become a highly sophisticated unified electronic database of more than 100 million households, listing names, addresses, demographic information, and purchase history for all product lines (Reader's Digest Association 1993: 14).

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Weintz was succeeded in 1958 by Gordon Grossman, a 26-year old Princeton graduate and Fulbright scholar, who introduced the exceedingly successful sweepstakes format on a national scale. These sweepstakes sometimes received phenomenal returns of 50 percent (Heidenry 1993: 517). The Digest published its first 'Book Supplement' in December 1934, twelve years after its inception. It was a condensation of Arnold Bennett's How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day. Because of their popularity, book condensations have appeared regularly in each issue of the Digest. In 1941 the Reader's Digest claimed (Reader's Digest Books 1941: 4) that "Today [the book supplement] is the most popular single feature in the magazine." Digest book condensations, and later the Condensed Books, on occasion significantly stimulated book store sales of the regular trade editions. John Tebbel (1972-1981, 3: 489) reported that: The growing influence of Reader's Digest condensations was evident as early as 1936, when Dorothea Brande's Wake Up and Live, with an advance sale of only 1,407 copies on a first printing of 3,000, eventually sold more than 100,000 after the magazine condensed it. In the same year, the Digest similarly boosted sales of Victor Heiser's An American Doctor's Odyssey from a first printing of 6,000 copies, and an advance sale of 13,841 on the strength of a BOMC selection, to a total of nearly 250,000 copies by the end of 1937 . . . . The Digest could even give a book another chance, as it did in the case of Alexis Carrel's Man the Unknown, published in September 1935, which had sold 59,000 and reached the best-seller lists before the Digest condensed it a year later. Then it sold another 120,000 copies or so. Reader's Digest book publishing began with The Readers Digest Reader, a compilation of condensations, which was published in 1940 by Doubleday. Following three additional titles,4 Reader's Digest published 14 Reader's Digest Books in 1948. It sold 600,000 copies to 10 percent of the subscriber base, with a profit of $500,000 (Weintz 1987: 127ff). In 1951 Weintz proposed a 30th Anniversary Reader's Digest Reader. Compiled by the editors, it was subtitled "a selection of memorable articles published in the Reader's Digest in the past thirty years," and sold about one million copies (Weintz 1987: 136-37). Weintz, the mail-order and direct marketing specialist, proposed the Reader's Digest Condensed Books Club. This was a natural evolution, combining the idea of a book club with Reader's Digest editorial, direct-mail marketing, and recent book publishing successes. Although book clubs have existed in the United States since 1825, the formation of the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1926 created an entirely new approach to book selling and distribution. Since then, book clubs have emerged as a major economic force in retailing. The main features of the Book-of-the-Month Club and its many imitators are convenience, selectivity, and price for the complete text of a book. (Book club copies are often printed with more text per page and on less expensive paper, and are bound in cheaper bindings.) The

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negative option provides a "member" the choice of declining or choosing an alternate selection. Although they are not true membership organizations, the word "club" adds the illusion of inclusion and membership (Curtis 1989: 160; Rubin 1985: 795; Tebbel 1975: 24-25). Forerunners of condensed volumes include abridgements, excerpted volumes, and anthologies. Other than the well-known Cliff Notes and Monarch Notes, there are volumes that summarize plots, characters, and themes; e.g., Keller's Reader's Digest of Books (1937), and the more recent Thesaurus of Book Digests, 1950-1980 (Weiss and Weiss 1981). According to Heidenry (1993: 219), a book club called Omnibooks offered excerpted versions of full-length works in the years before the Second World War. The Condensed Books direct-mail subscription series introduced several new features to book club retailing: 1) the volumes were available only by subscription, 2) they combined several condensed titles in one volume, and 3) they lacked the negative option choice (although books could be returned). The volumes were offered as a uniform set or series, which often appeals to readers and collectors. Doubleday challenged the Condensed Books within two years with its own direct-mail subscription series called Best-in-Books (changed to Best-in-Books Club in 1952), which was published from about 1952 until at least 1969. s A unique feature of this series was that, in addition to two to six excerpts, the volumes included the complete text of one to three books. Doubleday also published a Best in Children's Books around 1958.6 Doubleday tried again around 1976 with The Compact Library, noting on the rear dust jacket: "The Compact Library. Five Best Sellers in every volume, condensed for convenient reading, which included fiction and nonfiction. The volume's layout, illustrations, paper, and design were quite similar to those of the Reader's Digest Condensed Books, although it was slightly taller and wider. I have been unable to identify publishing information about Books Abridged, Inc. The only volume I have seen has a New York imprint with a 1956 copyright. Reader's Digest launched Today's Best Nonfiction in 1989, which is another condensed books direct-mail subscription series. The volumes are taller and wider than the Condensed Books series. In the same year Time-Warner Communication started the Time-Life Book Digest (1989-1992; Reuter 1989: 14), also a direct-mail subscription series, 7 with four selections, to be published six times a year. These volumes were identical in size to Reader's Digest's Today's Best Nonfiction (Heidenry 1993: 604). In spite of the fact that Time-Warner could draw on the mailing list of the Book-of-the-Month Club, a subsidiary it had acquired in 1977, the series ceased in 1992 after sixteen volumes were published. The only condensed books published today, other than those from Reader's Digest, are the religiously oriented Guideposts Condensed Books, which started in 1993. Other direct mail subscription series published by Reader's Digest include the Large-Type Reader, Selections from Reader's Digest Condensed Books and Other Digest Publications intended for visually handicapped readers, which began in

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1979, and The World's Best Reading, a series of unabridged individual titles of literary classics that began in 1982. In addition to publishing magazine compilations in books and the direct-mail Condensed Books subscription series, Reader's Digest has published gift books, sets of books, and many foreign editions. A separate division has at various times published trade books. The Condensed Books direct-mail subscription series has been published in the United States continuously since the first volume came out in the spring of 1950 with a printing of 183,000 copies when a normal printing for a trade title might run in the low-thousands. Except in 1950, when three volumes were published during its initial year, four volumes were published each year through 1972. Five volumes were offered from 1973 through 1979. From 1980 through 1992 subscribers received five volumes, but could choose one additional midyear volume. The formal volume sequence numbering, which started with number 127 in 1980, includes these optional midyear volumes. Since 1993, the regular subscription includes six volumes. A total of 213 sequential volumes have been published as of June 1994. In addition, identical texts were issued in a de luxe edition in the mid-1950s.8 The main difference seems to have been that regular volumes were bound in cloth and boards, whereas the de luxe volumes were bound with an imitation leather spine and had different dust jackets. Condensed Books continues to publish Bestsellers from Reader's Digest Condensed Books (1960?), which include a number of well-received condensed titles from the previous year and are sent free to new subscribers. The Condensed Books volumes follow a well-defined physical format, which has barely changed since its first appearance in 1950. Each of the millions of identically produced volumes is a first edition according to the information on the verso of the title page. A blank bookplate is printed on the machinemarbled front paste-down or free endpaper. Each volume has decorations and illustrations and the exterior boards may be decorated. In recent years the dust jacket, the spine title label, and the endpapers have been the same color. The frontispiece is a reproduction of an original work of art. This is often a copy of an original Impressionist painting from the Reader's Digest Collection hanging in the Pleasantville office corridors. Originally the books were bound in boards with cloth backstrips, but more recently the spines have been made of imitation leather. The backstrips are embossed in gilt and list the authors and titles. The top edges in recent volumes are gilt. At the end of each selection is a brief author profile, usually with a portrait. The front dust jackets usually display reproductions of the fronts of the original trade dust jackets, the inside flaps carry brief synopses of the condensations, and the rear dust jacket may include an endorsement from an author whose work has been condensed or testimonials from readers and educators. The number of pages in a volume ranges from 495 to 623, with a mean and a median of 575 pages. The number of condensations per volume ranges from three to six, with a mean of four-and-a-half. The median is four condensations per volume.

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From spring 1952 until at least the winter 1967 volume, the Condensed Books included an insert, News of The Reader's Digest Condensed Book Club. An envelope attached to the mailing carton contains the invoice, as well as promotional materials for other Reader's Digest volumes and products. In addition, subscribers are inundated with separate sweepstakes solicitations, which promote other Reader's Digest products. Packaging is a significant factor in selling Condensed Books. In earlier days the books arrived in cardboard canisters with metal caps. The canisters, and later cardboard shipping boxes, were colorfully and attractively covered with dust jacket reproductions of the Condensed Book volume inside the container. During 1993 a number of volumes arrived in not very sturdy, drab greenbordered brown cardboard shipping boxes with two compartments. One compartment contained the latest Reader's Digest volume and on the other side of a cardboard divider was a piece of Korean-made jewelry, such as faux pearl drop earrings, a gold-colored pin, a bracelet, or a necklace. On the back of the jewelry package was an offer to sell additional pieces of this jewelry at eight dollars each. In addition, subscribers received a silver-plated candle holder. The back of the package included the following message, "This FREEsample is for you--simply for enjoying Condensed Books." Known as a 'holding effort,' the purpose of the foreign-made jewelry and gifts is to retain readers. Because the sale of a book for condensation is quite lucrative, manuscripts and books are regularly submitted by literary agents and publishers. In addition, Reader's Digest editors sometimes suggest and support the writing of books, which are first published in regular trade editions and later condensed in the Digest or the Condensed Books, and in some cases in both. The 966 condensed selections that have appeared since 1950 were originally published by ninety-three imprint 'families.' The average is ten titles per publisher and the median is two titles. Forty-two publishers, or 45 percent, contributed just one title each. However, six publishers, representing 6 percent of the ninety-three publishers, published 467 of the original titles, or 50 percent. These six were Doubleday, with 144 titles, Morrow eighty-six, Harper, and Simon and Schuster, both sixty-three, St. Martin's sixty, and Putnam fifty-one. These rankings do not necessarily correlate with the number of each publisher's trade titles. This analysis is based, admittedly, on a rather uneven sample, because it covers the forty-four-year period from 1950 to 1994, and includes many mergers, name changes, and imprints that have ceased to exist. A total of 582 authors wrote the 966 condensed titles. The ratio of male to female authors is two-and-a-half to one. The top eight authors, who represent about 1.3 percent of all authors, are Dick Francis, with fifteen titles, Henry Denker with fourteen, Victoria Holt with thirteen, Dorothy Gilman with ten, and nine titles each by Mary Higgins Clark, Arthur Hailey, Jack Higgins, and James Michener. Together these eight authors contributed eighty-eight titles, or nearly 14 percent. Five authors contributed eight titles, three contributed seven, six contributed six titles, nine wrote five, twenty-two contributed four, twenty-six contributed three, and seventy-four contributed two titles each. How-

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ever, 430 authors, or 74 percent, contributed one title each. The average number of titles contributed is 1.7, and the median is one. There are twenty-five selections from translations into English--fourteen from French, seven from German, two from Swedish, and one each from Finnish and Italian. The Condensed Books were designed to include four different books: one or two current best-selling novels, a prominent work of nonfiction, and a "Digest discover," either a new book or a classic (Heidenry 1993: 219-20). In effect, there are about four titles of fiction for each title of nonfiction. The Reader's Digest editorial policy that I have gathered from my reading is to select 1) magazine articles that are quotable, applicable to the reader's daily life, and of lasting value, and 2) books that have clarity, simplicity, and drama, with characters who are respected by readers and aware of moral choices. Lacking a formal definition of Reader's Digest's usage of the word 'condensation,' I propose the following definition: an extended hierarchical editorial process of abridging and summarizing text by retaining both style and substance (known as 'cutting'), omitting quotation marks from verbatim passages, replacing deletions with transitions made in the manner of the author, and toning down or excising excessive violence and explicit sex scenes, without changing vocabulary other than inserting dashes following the first letter of a profanity (Curtis 1989: chap. 23; Heidenry 1993: 40, 63, 219, 424; MacDougall 1972: 68-78; Schreiner 1977; Wood 1967). Soon after a volume is published, Reader's Digest surveys a selected group of its readers with its internally developed Enthusiasm Quotient (EQ) Survey. Few of these survey results are available. Earlier surveys commissioned by the Digest that have been published include several done by Alfred Politz Research (1956-1957, 1960), and one done in the Netherlands (Vries 1968). Evidence of who subscribes to and reads the Condensed Books is, therefore, primarily anecdotal. Weintz (1987: 139-40) noted that Condensed Books were intended to be sold to magazine, rather than book, readers. Many Digest readers have become Condensed Books subscribers. Schreiner (1977: 85) noted that, " . . . a marketing expert who, having studied the CB audience for years, told me, 'What it amounts to is selling hardcover books to people who don't buy books; less than 10 percent of CB members buy one other book a year.'" John T. Beaudouin, when he was a Reader's Digest vice president and the Condensed Books editor, told a reporter (MacDougall 1972: 78) that "The vast majority of our members don't read book reviews and don't go to bookstores." Heidenry (1993: 410) reports that "[Around 1970] 70 percent of the readers of the U.S. edition [of the Digest] were women." By 1984, the Digest's readership was more than fifty years old and primarily female (Heidenry 1993: 569). According to Barbara J. Morgan, the Editor-in-Chief of the Condensed Books, the audience for Today's Best Nonfiction is (Brainard 1989: 38): . . . divided equally, male and female.., somewhere between 35 and 49 years old, an eager reader, with a 60% likelihood of having graduated

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from college or beyond, and working in a job ranging from sales and clerical to managerial to professional.., belongs to a more sophisticated crowd, younger, somewhat more affluent, and perhaps better educated than the Condensed readership . . . . My informal personal survey includes a middle-aged female comparative literature professor who readily admitted that she read Condensed Books when spending summers at her grandmother's house. A middle-aged female campus colleague honored her mother-in-law by reading the Condensed Books volume that she was given for Christmas. Although this colleague prefers to read Shakespeare, she remarked that she found two of the four condensations quite interesting. Finally, there is my friend Mike. He is a British-born American citizen who retired quite a few years ago as a successful automobile salesman. He has subscribed to the Condensed Books since 1970 and has read every selection, except one about Harry Truman. 9 Mike thinks that the current condensations are much smoother than they were in past decades, when he felt that the transitions were sloppy. Mike views himself as a busy person who does not want to waste his time. He enjoys reading about many subjects and does not feel that the Condensed Books are particularly oriented toward women. Mike always discovers one selection that especially interests him. To the best of my knowledge, he does not regularly buy books or frequent the public library. What is the Reader's Digest Condensed Books franchise? DeWitt Wallace invented the idea of condensation and packaged it in the Digest's small booklet format. This was combined with very effective mail-order and direct marketing techniques, including continual market testing and follow-up, to entice magazine readers to subscribe to serially published books. The Condensed Books provide a convenient, compact, and efficient way to read, and avoid the need to select one's reading. As most of the editorial selections in the Condensed Books represent established popular authors and genres, it allows for some experimentation and risk-taking with other authors and titles. The volumes are attractively presented and produced in a uniform format, and the imitation leather spines create an appearance of prestige and rarity. Unlike the Digest, which has a political and social agenda, the Condensed Books are published solely for their entertainment. In "A Short Condensed Poem in Praise of Reader's Digest Condensed Books," Dr. Seuss (1980)* makes the ultimate argument: It has often been said There's so much to be read, you never can cram all those words in your head. So the writer who breeds more words than he needs

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is making a chore for the reader who reads. That's why my belief is the briefer the brief is, the greater the sigh of the reader's relief is.

And that's why your books have such power and strength. You publish with shorth! (Shorth is better than length.) *Published by permission of Dr. Seuss Enterprises. TM 9 1994 Dr. Seuss Enterprises L.P. Notes 1. Reader's Digest Association, Inc., Reader's Digest, Reader's Digest Condensed Books, and related corporate and product name copyrights and trademarks are hereby acknowledged. I am much indebted to Ms. Barbara J. Morgan, Editor-in-Chief, Reader's Digest Condensed Books, for the opportunity to visit and discuss this research project with Ms. Bonnie Grande, Senior Editor, Condensed Books International, and to inspect Condensed Books volumes in Pleasantville, July 1994. 2. I have not examined Schroeder or Baylon. 3. Information on the extent of the Reader's Digest Association's invesb-aents in other publishing and printing companies is not available. 4. Reader'sDigest Books (1941), 20th Anniversary Anthology (1941), Getting the Most out of Life: An Anthology from The Reader's Digest (1946). 5. I have examined scattered volumes covering this period. 6. I have examined one volume with a 1958 copyright date, which has a small number 9 on the I~tle page. 7. Additional information obtained from the Reader's Digest office library, July 1994. 8. I have examined seven volumes dated between Spring 1954 (#17) and Spring 1957 (#28). 9. This was probably Jhan Robbins, Bess and Harry: An American Love Story (New York: Putnam, 1980), condensed in 1980: 4.

References Alfred Politz Research, Inc., N.Y. 1956-1957. A Study of Seven Publications: Their Audiences and Reading Days. Conducted by Alfred Politz Research, Inc. New York, Reader's Digest. Alfred Politz Research, Inc., N.Y. 1960-. Advertising Exposure... New York. Bainbridge, John. 1946. Little Wonder, or, The Reader's Digest and How It Grew. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. Baylon, Daniel. 1988. L'Amdrique Mythifide: Le Reader's Digest de 1945 ~ 1970. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail. Best-in-Books. 1952-1969.Garden City, N.Y.: Nelson Doubleday. Title changed to Best-in-Books Club in 1952. Best in Children's Books. 1958. Garden City, N.Y.: Nelson Doubleday, Inc. Bestsellers from Reader's Digest Condensed Books. 19607- . Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Books Abridged, Inc. I956. New York: n.p., n.d. The only volume I have seen is copyrighted in 1956 and has a number 24 on the verso of the title page. Brainard, Dulcy. May 26, 1989. "Reader's Digest Launching Direct-Mail Nonfiction Series." Publishers Weekly 235: 37-38. The Compact Library. 1976. Nelson Doubleday, Inc., Garden City, N.Y. The copy I examined is copyrighted in 1976; the number on title page verso is 1PG. The front dust jacket reads, 'A Doubleday Club, The Compact Library."

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Curtis, Richard. 1989. Beyond the Bestseller: A Literary Agent Takes You Inside the Book Business. New York: New American Library. Fortune. April 18, 1994. "The Fortune 500." 129: 210-313. 14 Reader's Digest Books. 1948. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Association. Getting the Most out of Life: An Anthology from The Reader's Digest. I946. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Association. Guideposts Condensed Books. 1993-. Carmel, N.Y.: Guideposts Heidenry, John. 1993. Theirs Was the Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the Story of the "Reader's Digest.' New York: W. W. Norton. Keller, Helen Rex. 1937. The Reader's Digest of Books. New and greatly enlarged ed. New York: Macraillan. Large-Type Reader, Selections from Reader's Digest Condensed Books and Other Digest Publications. 1979- . Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Fund for the Blind, Inc. Levering, Robert, Milton Moskowitz, and Michael Katz. 1984. The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. MacDougall, Allen Kent. 1972. "Reader's Digest." A chapter in The Press: A Critical Look from the Inside, comp. by Allan Kent MacDougall. Princeton, N.J.: Dow Jones Books. News of The Reader's Digest Condensed Book Club. 1952-1967.Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Reader's Digest Association. 1993. Annual Report. Reader's Digest Books. 1941. Selected and condensed by the editors of Reader's Digest. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Association. Reader's Digest Condensed Books. 1950-. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Condensed Books. The Readers [sic] Digest Reader. 1940. Selected by Theodore Roosevelt and the staff of the Reader's Digest. First ed. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1940; Reprinted. 1942; Reissued. Garden City: Garden City Publishing Co., 1946. Three selections replaced. The volumes included 140 articles. Reuter, Madalynne. Sep. 22, 1989. "Time-Life to Challenge Reader's Digest in Condensed Books Market." Publishers Weekly 236: 14. Roeder, Otto H. 1954. Der Konzern der guten Herzen: Geschichte einer journalistischen Welteroberung. Oldenburg: G. Stalling. Rubin, Joan Shelley. 1985. "Self, Culture, and Self-Culture in Modem America: The Early History of the Book-of-the-Month Club." Journal of American History 71: 782-806. Schreiner, Samuel A., Jr. 1977. The Condensed World of The Reader's Digest. New York: Stein and Day. Seuss, Dr., pseud. (Ted Geisel). 1980: 1. "A Short Condensed Poem in Praise of Reader's Digest Condensed Books." Reader's Digest Condensed Books, rear dust jacket. Tebbel, John. 1972-1981. A History of Book Publishing in the United States. 4 vols. New York: R. R. Bowker. Tebbel, John. 1975. "A Brief History of American Bookselling," in BookseUing in America and the World, edited by Charles B. Anderson. New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co. The 30th Anniversary Reader's Digest Reader. 1951. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Association. Time-Life Book Digest. 1989-1992. N.p.: Time-Warner Libraries, Inc. Today's Best Nonfiction. 1989- . Selected and edited by Reader's Digest. Pleasantville, N.Y.: The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. 20th Anniversary Anthology. 1941. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Association. Vries, L. de. 1968. Portret van de Lezer van 'Het Beste' en Zijn Portret van 'Het Beste." Amsterdam: Uitgeversmij. The Reader's Digest. Weintz, Walter H. 1987. The Solid Gold Mailbox, How to Create Winning Mail-Order Campaigns... by the Man Who's Done it All. New York: John Wiley. Weiss, Irving, and Anne de la Vergne Weiss, comps, and eds. 1981. Thesaurus of Book Digests, 1950-1980. New York: Crown. Wood, James Playsted. 1967. Of Lasting Interest: The Story of The Reader's Digest. Rev. ed. Garden City: Doubleday. The World's Best Reading. 1982-. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Association.