Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 June 1943 — Page 11

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DINNER IS SCHEDULED |Mesonic temple with Mrs. Matilda

BY LAWRENCE 0. E. S.|Deriing; worthy patron, presiding.

Preceding the meeting a dinner

OLD AGE 1 SETS MEETING Indiana old age pension program, | group 1, will meet tomorrow night

ful for his capture in Tunisia by a

m™ ye ITALIAN GENERAL | 35-year-old Denver artillery officer HONORS CAPTOR that he presented the soldier with

4 military medal, a letter from the

V. Marshall in a letter to his mother, Mrs. F. L. Marshall. The lieutenant said he was commissioned a member of the Centaurs, a recently

PENSION UNIT CARD PARTY

" Old-Age Pension Program club, No. 3, will sponsor a card party

The Lawrence ‘O. E. S. Will meet will be held for officers and their in room 12¢ of the English hotel.l DENVER, June 20 (U. P.).—A cap- [officer disclosed today. . |created Italian military order, by| tomorrow night in the MoKinlgy at 8 p. m. tomorrow in the Lawrence families. | Mrs. Emma Sprouse is guest speaker. | tured Italian general was so grate-| The story was told by Lt. John |the general, and given a citation.|club house, 3217 W. Michigan hd

satin,

And Gen, MacNider Is Best

IE MW Jeep Driver in New

Guinea.

By HAL O'FLAHERTY

SOMEWHERE IN NEW GUINEA, June 30—It's been raining four days straight here turning the Jungles ‘into a steaming morass which seems to be meat for Brig. Gen. Hanford MacNider, the best am jeep driver in New Guinea. His early training in Towa gumbo roads now stands him in stead be-

will go where even ; bulldozers fail. Riding in the back seat behind the genzral was Mr. O'Flaherty. jike trying out some strange new world’s fair conwivance combining roller coaster and water chute. ails Through a flower-decked trail er. dozens of water. courses and miles of corduroy road, Gen. MacNider wrestled his jeep. into and out. of mudholes. :

he Machinery Is Factor

Time and again long lines of traffic were held up by a mired truck or tractor. The general seldom hesitated and turned off into the jungle, crushing through bright red flowers and palm branches raisdng. a rancid smell reminiscent of wet basements. : As in Ireland and North Africa, the Americans, with their machinery are demonstrating how to lay 8 solid foundation for a long campaign, . It takes time and endless material but the job is getting done .in record time. If the rains only “subside for a short time, our task _ will be much easier. Meantime, our caterpillars, bull@dozers, trucks and roadgraders are ‘making possible the admission of the regular supply force yet to _gome. ; These men out here are pioneerng. They live in native-built huts, ‘thrown up from palm logs and “bamboo poles, with palm-leaf thatched roofs. : Generals and officers of all grades wear jungle boots and

“Yough clothes with little sign of |:

~ rank except a badge on their cap.

INSURANCE RATE

WAR IS POSSIBLE

of a rate war among companies: writigg’ accident ‘and lability in- |

surance as a result of an opinion issued by Attorney General James

Emmert.

Mr. Emmert advised Frank J. _Viehmann, state insurance com-

missioner, that he should receive the filing of a rate schedule by the All‘State Insurance Co. of Chicago, ‘even though that schedule provided * yates. 10 per cent less. than the minimum: rates established by the commissioner last October. "Fhe attorney general upheld the wer of the commissioner to refuse ) - accept rate schedules which would result in insolvency to the

company and loss to the policy|

holders. Mr. Viehmann had stated int ‘his letter that the low rate proged by the All-State would not peril the company or policy ers. Insurance companies expect to ll thousands of new accident and + lability policies when the new finéncial responsibility law goes into effect early next month. The law, passed by the 1943 legislature, will bé ‘promulgated then.

"REQUESTS HALT OF “CIVILIAN AIR RIDES:

FT. WAYNE, Ind, June 30 (U.

y PA. J. Behrens of South Bend,

" district inspector of the civil aeromautics authority, today requested Smith . municipal airport officials here to “crack down” on private pilots taking passengers on flights over the city. “Robert T. Schott, airport manjer, said an order banning pleas-

4, -~ ure passenger flights was invoked

Ei x )

| |

shortly after declaration of war in|’

as much as Ft. Wayne was classified a restricted zone. However, he said, ~ gome private pilots continued selling flight tickets. The CAA order today was made in an effort to prevent

suéh flights.

FIRST AID PRACTICE

SESSION SCHEDULED

District 15, emergency medical corps, will meet at 7:30 p. m. to-

porrow at St. Paul's Lutheran school, 743 Weghorst st., for practice and drill in casualty station

operation. . “Residents in the district holding first aid certificates are asked to port to the casualty station in ve) t of a blackout even though

do not attend meetings regu-| |

OB’S DAUGHTERS RITE s Rosemary Selmier will be d as honor queen of Bethel

, Order of Job's Daughters, in| blic ceremony at 8 o'clock to-| at the women's department

b instead of at Castle hall as anced previously. :

EASY TO BUY

pretoinsiston | PURE ASPIRIN 1 can’t aspirin that do you, so why p more, World's

“Questions and Answers

about Wendell

§ this page goes to press, Wendell Willkie’s book has been published for L MX less than three months. In that time, it has broken all existing book publishing records for public acceptance. Now that a digest 'of One World is appearing in the Indianapolis Times, readers of this'newspaper are demonstrating a lively interest in the behind-the-

scenes story of the book’s publication and success.

In letters to Mr. Willkie, and to his publishers, a number of questions are being asked about it. The curiosity evidenced is so great that we, as the publishers of Mr. Willkie’s book, feel the facts behind the giant sale of One World should be public property. We have therefore selected the most frequently asked questions .and have attempted to answer them on this page.

QUESTION. Did Mr. Willkiewrite“ One World” himself?

ANSWER. Yes.

This is perhaps the most frequently asked question of all, apparently upon the assumption that the books of public figures are ghost-written. The facts are: a friend of Mr. Willkie connected with the publishers urged

- him to publish, as a book, the four or five speeches he “made following his return from his world-encircling - trip. Finally he agreed, but when he got to the task of editing his speeches, he realized that an account of his

experiences on his ttip and of the people with whom he

had talked would reinforce and illuminate the conclu-

sions he had presented in public talks after his return.

He discussed the idea with Joseph Barnes and with Gardner Cowles, his friends who had accompanied him around the world. He asked them to give him memoranda of incidents and to gather together for him such notes as they had accumulated on the trip. Mr. Willkie then spent the next six weeks writing “One World.”

The original manuscript has been requested by many libraries. Mr. Willkie has promised it to the Library of Congress and he intends to deliver with it the memoranda and notes which he used in writing the book.

In connection with his writing of the book, two other points may be interesting to note. First, Mr. Willkie, like many othér authors, stated when he had completed the manuscript that he had never worked harder on anything in his life. Second, and again like many other authors, Mr. Willkie’s original estimate on the size of the book was quite wrong. Even after he had started writing, he told his publishers: “There’s not a chance of its running.over 30,000 words.” It turned out to be more than twice as long.

QUESTION. Did anyone foresee or correctly predict the enormous success of “One World"?, :

ANSWER. No one. The highest pre-publication estimate

given by anyone in the offices of the publishers was 250,ooo copies. Mr. Willkie himself said privately that he

“would be most pleased if the book were to reach 150,000

people. When one optimistic member of the publishing house offered: to give odds of three to one (in five dollar units) that the book would do better, Mr. Willkie took the bet. He lost, but not in actual money, since his check was proudly framed. The advance sale came to 55,000 copies, and most booksellers felt they had adequate stock to meet the early demand.

QUESTION. Just how many copies have been sold thus far?

ANSWER. One World was published on April 8th. By Thursday, June 24th, the day these words are being written, 1,233,00chave been printed, and 1,171,000 have been sold to the public.

QUESTION. Has any book ever caught on so rapidly as “One World"?

ANSWER. Na book in the history of book publishing has been bought by so many people so quickly. A number of books have sold more copies in their entire lifetimes than has One World in the first six weeks, but research brin;

to light no single book that has caught on at such a whirl-

wind pace, Itis already one of the three best-selling non-

fiction titles of the twentieth century. It still has quite a

way to go before it tops the 3,000,000 copy record hung

up by Gone With the Wind, since its publication in 1936. THe “Retail Bookseller,” a leading trade organ, says in its monthly best-seller analysis: “One World has more than doubled the highest month’s sale we have ever

"before recorded. It has sold more copies in a month than

most big best-sellers in a year. It’s just as though someone did 28 feet in the pole vault or ran 100 yards in 4 seconds, or drove a plane 1,200 miles an hour, No matter

how long we may live we are hardly likely to see another:

book sell like One World,”

QUESTION. Just how much of “One World” is being syndicated in this newspaper?,

ANSWER. ‘As was said in the first column on this page, One World is a book of a little more than 60,000 words. The digest of the book appearing in this newspaper runs to 10,000 words, or just about one-sixth of the book.

QUESTION. How does the popularity of the $1.00 paper edition compare with that of the clothbound one at $2.007

ANSWER. To date, 1,008,000 of the paper edition and 225,000 of the cloth edition have been printed. This is, we believe, a unique situation in publishing history. For a $2.00 book to become a great best-seller in its own right

when it has been published simultaneously with a dollar

edition, is unheard af. As of this moment, 204,713 of the cloth bound book alone have been sold in less than three months. The reason appears to lie in the fact that many ersons prefer to purchase the more permanent cloth ound edition for their library shelves.

"QUESTION. Where can copies of either edition be ob-

tained?

ANSWER. The cloth edition ($2.00) is available in all book and department stores. The $1.00 edition is available in the same outlets plus most drug stores, newsstands and chain stores.

QUESTION. Does such a runaway best-seller cause much excitement in the book business?

ANSWER. Indeed, yes. The offices of the publisher were completely disorganized on publication day, and for several weeks thereafter. Thousands of telegrams and telephone calls from all over the country flooded the office. Billing department, shipping department, sales and-advertising department did not even have time for the nervous breakdowns they justly felt were coming to them. The telegrams varied from frantic ones from large chain stores pleading for immediate shipment of from

10,000 to 50,000 coples—copies that were not yet off the

presses—to one earnest wire from a small book store which read, “RUSH 100 MORE WILLKIE STOP DEMAND UNPRESIDENTED” (sic).

On April 12th, four days after publication, the sales manager of the publishers went out for a half hour and returned to find a page of instructions telling him to get in touch with out of town operators in Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Washington, Detroit, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles’ (there were three from Cleve-

land). Each of these calls represented a book or depart-

ment store urgently desiring to place a reorder; Rate of

sale for the first week was so great that one chain.of:stores- *

—Womrath’s—ran out of stock, and by the following’ day had piled up more than 2,000 unfilled orders...

ilkie’s

book, ONE WORLD

QUESTION. How did the publishers manage to catch up to the demand? -

ANSWER. They didn’'t—for three weeks. It was necessary to run advertisements in fifty newspapers apologizing to. the public because it was impossible to get enough books

' to bookstores. It was completely impossible, too, for the

advertisements to keep up with the rate of sale. An advertisement would, for instance, run in one paper on a Friday stating that printings had now reached the half million mark. Two days later, an advertisement that had been prepared well in advance to meet the early closing requirements of a different paper would state that the book’s sale was only a quarter of a million.

The publishers finally managed to catch up with the book by having it printed in two plants and bound in a third one. Five sets of plates were made, and the printers ran extra shifts on a 24-hour schedule steadily over a twoweek period. As a result, a peak production of go,000 copies in a single day was on But in order to hit

- this peak, the foreman of one of the printing houses was

obliged to call all his head pressmen into a big huddle resembling a locker room pep talk before a big football game. Pointing to the publisher’s out of stock advertisement, which he had pasted on his bulletin board, he said : “Look, you guys! Look what's been sold by last Tuesday! How can we expect to catch up to Mr. Willkie at the rate we're going? You guys got to make them roll!” The pep talk worked. They finally caught up with Mr. Willkie.

QUESTION. Ts “Orne World” too heavy to send overseas to men in the Armed Forces?

ANSWER. No. With the exception of the first three printings, the paper bound copies weigh less than eight ounces.

" QUESTION. Is it true that the rate of sale is due to a

special large distribution by book clubs, individuals or corporations,

ANSWER. Completely untrue. Some time ago a radio commentator broadcast the statement that the sale was due very largely to a special distribution by a book club. This was incorrect. The book has been distributed by no book club (incidentally, itwill be distributed by the Book-of-the-Month Club beginning in July as part of its JulyAugust dividend) and has been purchased by no organization whatsoever in quantity—with the exception of one order for 300 copies by a single individual. All copies sold to date have gone into bookstores, department stores or other retail outlets, who, in turn, have sold One World to the public in ones or twos. or occasionally in fives and tens. :

QUESTION. Was “One World” censored in any way by the government?

ANSWER. No. QUESTION. Did the book receive a completely enthusiastic press? : ANSWER. No. Itistrue that the vast bulk of book reviews, radio and magazine reviews, comments from ministers, educators and other persons prominent in public life were outspoken in their praise of One World. But there

were a few dissenting voices. Among the more influential newspapers, only the Chicago Tribune damned the book.

The New York Daily News book review column did

not review it— although the editorial section of that newspaper did comment upon it.

QUESTION. Do the publishers feel particularly

proud of their publish-

ing campaign on “One

World”?

ANSWER. They do not. If ever a book made its publisher’s every sales effort appear puny and insignificant, that book is One World. The people who have been responsible for its success are not the publishers—they are millions

‘of Americans (each book . 1s read by several people) .who have wanted to read

what Wendell Willkie had to say,

SIMON AND SCHUSTER o PUBLISHERS » ROCKEFELLER CENTER « NEW YORK