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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

Cerf:

Of course it does.

I think the hardbound publisher's got to be in on all this someway or another. The hardbound publisher who hasn't buttressed himself with an interest in a paperback house has been very short-sighted.

I credit Robert DeGraff with starting the regular Pocketbook thing. He was the innovator of that. But the man who really got the good book paperbacks started was Jason Epstein, who started Anchor Books at Doubleday with fantastic results. Doubleday, of all houses, which is interested in popular stuff almost exclusively--I mean they're the people who clean up on books like Hotel and Airport, and popular authors like Leon Uris and Irving Stone--were almost conned into doing Anchor Books. Doubleday bigwigs didn't thing that much would come of it; but this brilliant boy, Jason Epstein, opened their eyes.

Q:

And Scribner has followed.

Cerf:

Earlier, just about everybody had followed Pocketbooks when they saw what a good thing it was. In the same way Anchor Books became the keystone for paperback series of more important works. Knopf and Random House, for instance, together with Vintage Books, which today is, I guess, bigger than Anchor Books.

Q:

Is that the first time that you two began...?





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