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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

Cerf:

Not a penny. He did it as a present. And when the firm became big and successful, every time I met him he grumbled about that trademark. He still does. He says, “Boy, what I could have got for that trademark.”

Q:

Did you have a lot of profit that you wanted to invest?

Cerf:

We wanted excitement. No, we didn't expect to make any great money out of these books.

Q:

You didn't think you were going to lose, though.

Cerf:

No, of course not. But the Modern Library was doing nobly for us. This was to have some fun and excitement on the side. After we established our ties with Nonesuch, we became the leading distributors of press books in the United States. We had the Golden Cockerell Press, the Dove Press, and many others. All these private presses came begging us to take them on because they were all basking in the reflected glory of the Nonesuch Press, which was the established name for a limited edition, and Random House became the established name for the distributor of limited editions--all in a space of months. So by 1929 we had a catalogue of about 50 limited edition books each season. Of course, the market crashed in 1929, and the market for these limited editions absolutely disappeared overnight.





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