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On the Nonesuch books, I've heard people say that there is a philosophy of selling--selling anything, but selling books. If you put less in a bookstore and make it scarce and hard to get--

Well, they were limited editions. There's no question that that added to the appeal. You were getting something your neighbor couldn't get a hold of. You were exclusive when you got a Nonesuch book. Sure, that added.

But you never did this with the Modern Library.

Oh, the Modern Library was mass, not class.

But could you say anything about the art of selling? Do you think this applies or do you think that you should flood the market?

Not flood, no. We don't flood. In fact, we at Random House do something that very few other publishers do. We have what we call automatic distribution. This means that for every bookstore that will agree to this--and about 80 per cent of them have--we don't sell them books anymore. We decide how many books to send them. It's automatic.

A lot of publishers do this.