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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

paperback library, took away from us their Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald titles. It broke my heart. For the same reason when Harcourt started their Harbrace Books, we lost Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey. But that's all in the game. The publishing business has changed immeasurably since I started in 1923!

Q:

These were nice books to have in the Modern Library.

Cerf:

Sure they were. Luckily, Random House and Knopf and Pantheon have their own magnificent back-lists so just using our own books we can add enough new Modern Library titles to keep the series spruced up.

Q:

Has it mainly been from your own? Have you been able to get any good new titles from other publishers?

Cerf:

Occasionally. In recent years, publishers have found that they can sell paperback rights for very big prices; and sometimes they have given us the Modern Library rights too because we don't interfere with the paperback sale. We provide almost a third market. Now, it doesn't compare in volume with the paperback; but many authors are very proud to be in the Modern Library. There's kudos attached to it. It's a beautiful series, and an author feels that he's arrived if he gets into the Modern Library. So one of the things that we can hold out at Random House





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