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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

to take care of lining up new books; Donald was going to take care of getting the books through--manufacturing them and producing them; and Bob was going to be in charge of all the internal organization. It never worked out that way, but that was the way we thought we were going to do it. But those were the happy days, and everybody did everything. I wrote the ads; I did the jacket blurbs; we all took turns selling. Everybody had a good time.

Then to make our organization complete, Lou Miller, who was at Doubleday, came over with us as sales manager. That was a very important thing to Random House. He's the greatest sales manager, I think, in the history of publishing.

Q:

How was he great? Can you explain a little bit? Was he able to attract good salesmen?

Cerf:

The very best! He covered the country for us superbly. And everybody respected and liked him. There was never any nonsense about Lou Miller. He put in a new discount schedule which some of the jobbers screamed and raged about, but he made it stick. In those days everybody used to give 2% and ten days. He cut it to 1% and ten days. The book stores all swore they weren't going to buy any more books from Random House. Their threat proved an empty one, and this made a difference to us over the years of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Another important thing he did: he started before he left our school and library service, which





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