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paid them back to him 100 shares at a time.

To tell you what an incredible purchase this was, in two years we had made back not only the $50,000 that we had borrowed, but we had made back the entire investment. The minute we put our full attention on it, this series simply boomed. The only competition was Everyman's Library, which was an English series and which was languishing. There were no paperback books in those days. We had the only cheap editions of Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter and Dorian Grey and all the modern classics. The Modern Library was used in every college. Now, I'll get into what we did with Modern Library, but I just want to finish up this story.

Just as we took it over I said to Donald, “You know, Liveright is such an idiot about money. I'll bet if we gave him a lump sum, we'd cut down that $25,000 obligation.” So we went to Liveright and said we'd give him $15,000 to call off the agreement, and Horace accepted it. So instead of paying him $5,000 for five years, we got out of that for $15,000. So the Modern Library cost us $215,000. Immediately a couple of other publishers tried to buy it from us. We could have made $100,000 overnight, but this was the beginning of our publishing busines, the Modern Library, Inc.

Now, all the orders for the Modern Library were still going to Liveright because we had just taken over. The first thing we'd do every day, Donald and I, the two great publishers, would go to Liveright and collect the Modern Library orders. Then we'd rush back and count the total number of books ordered.