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put in everything. We had to set up everything and then he decided what to leave in and take out. The author's corrections were about $6,000 because instead of five volumes, we had set up enough for almost ten volumes. Then, when it was all set up, he decided what to take out. We thought this outrageous, but had no say in the matter.
Is it still on a backlist?
No.
Libraries haven't kept it up?
What happened was, we printed 15,000 sets, which didn't seem exorbitant at the time; but it soon turned out that we were going to be stuck because, as I say, a lot of the bookstores wouldn't even buy copies. They hated Roosevelt so. We got letters saying, “I always thought that Random House was a fine publisher, but we'll never buy -another book with a Random House imprint.” I had to write these people, “What you're angry about is that we published something by the President of the United States; How dare you say this.”
One store up in Boston, one famous old bookstore, said, “We'll buy as many sets as you can deliver bound in his own skin.” A store down in Philadelphia--one of the finest
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