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should we go into the book business? Because if you want to go into the book business, that's a totally different thing. This is just by-product, and it's been pre-promoted by virtue of having been published in the magazine.”

And I kept resisting starting the book department--I don't know why everybody looked at me to start the book department--but I did resist it quite a long time. I think maybe even Ed may have been--Ed Thompson--may have been in favor of it. Until finally I said, “Well, if you guys want a book department, the first thing to do is to get somebody here who knows something about books, and there is nobody on our staff that knows anything about the book trade, see. We got to find ourselves a person.” Well, I thought everybody agreed to it. And I finally did find somebody. It was Jerry Hardy, who had been sniffing around, thinking that there was a great'opportunity for Time, Inc. in the whole book field, and he'd been talking to a lot of people--practically everybody but me. Anyway, I finally decided to--I hired Hardy, and I gave him a prescription, which was that in five years he was to have a volume of sales of 25 million dollars and a net of five million--which was a pretty ambitious goal, but which he accepted. And he took on the job. Then I discovered that I had infuriated Bob Elson, because Bob Elson--who was then general manager--thought he should have been the book publisher.

General manager of LIFE.

Of LIFE, yes. That he should have been the publisher. Anyway, Jerry went off and did it and exceeded the--he didn't exceed