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A couple of million dollars. When the purchase was announced, everybody said, “They'll be at each other's throats inside of six months,” but there has never been one argument in the history of Grosset and Dunlap since we bought it. There has never been a more friendly combination in the history of publishing--never one argument. We persuaded to run it Mr. John O'Connor, and this turned out to be a masterful stroke. He's a great diplomat and runs the show beautifully.
Gradually Grosset became big juvenile publishers, although the division that we bought it for--the hardbound reprints--disappeared, vanished. So in a couple of years, the whole purpose for which the purchase was made was gone; but it turned out to be one of the most profitable investments that any of us had ever made because the Grosset juvenile department began to proliferate.
Do you feel that this is any competition to your juveniles?
Of course it is. Grosset and Random House have been great competitors since the very beginning. It never bothers us.
Then came another dramatic development. During World War Two, a young man named Ian Ballantine got the agency in this country for paperback Penguin Books. He was doing very well with them. He got two people interested with him, Mr. Curt Enoch and Mr. Victor Weybright. Then Curt Enoch
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