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Publishing Giant leaves his paperback empire PB Post 05-01-77veil fact one prontic temw wn® would keep her neighbors in stitches s�at���m��r�;p��r®n Roberts with the stories she told. Turn to DELACORTE, c2 George Delacorte's. Career 'Touched by Yonnegutr Disney, Haley C2—Palm Beach Post -Times, Sunday, May 1, 1877 Del a used to, turn out a detective story every three months. Then suddenly, he dried up. ``We hired a ghostwri- ter and the original author would ge postcards saying how much they en- joyed his later books. The fellow eventually drank himself to death." He got. a good price for. his name, �.m. .,,. hough. "He really held us up," De- acorte laughed. No bitterness there. `It was his name. He could sell it -)r what he wanted, " Ironically, Delacorte said, your kggest successes are sometimes our failures, too. The minute the 'Nixon transcripts were released, both Dell and. Bantam rushed to print. Within a week, their books were on the street. "It did tremendous for the first three or four weeks," Delacorte said. "You couldn't keep them on the shelves. When the retailer couldn't get them from his wholesal- er, he'd go to a broker and a general distributor, and we wound up with three orders for the same copies." The orders came in, the presses churned, then there was a screech- ing halt. "It just died. Dead," De- lacorte said. "Both Bantam and Dell sold 1.5 million copies each. But we both lost money because it just sud- denly died. " There's just no telling which are going to soar and which are going to flounder, Delacorte said. Even a lousy book can make it, he said. "Look at that, one by Joyce Haber. It's a terrible book. Almost unread- able. But look how long it's been on the best-seller list." An author with a personality can do a lot to boost sales, primarily via the tube. "I remember the first diet book we put out by Dr. Stillman, " he laughed. Delacorte didn't think too much of the diet, and it was highly controversial. "But we sold 7 million." The biggest thing they had going for them was Stillman himself. "He wasn't an interesting person, but he was a character," Delacorte said. "He performed well on television, so he kept being asked to appear on the talk shows." He apparently had a great lip. The more he talked, the more his books sold. One of the best books Delacorte ever ran across was one that never happened. It was the love letters of Eldridge Cleaver. "We published `Soul On Ice'," Delacorte said. "It made over a million dollars." The book was an angry, screaming indictment of whites, written as De- lacorte puts it, "with hate and ven- om." Well, it just so happened that a Jewish female attorney met Cleaver when she was visiting the jail one day. Intrigued by him, she became a frequent visitor. "She fell in love with him and worked like hell for his release," Delacorte said. Love letters passed between the two. "They were divine," he said "like the letters of Abelard and He- loise. " The Black Panther leader — preacher of violence — was a ten- der, sensitive verbal lover. "De- lacorte wanted to print the letters, but Cleaver wouldn't give his per- mission — for a very good reason. In his book, Delacorte said, Cleav- er was particularly vociferous against popular black figures who marry white women. "Eldridge de- cided, therefore, he couldn't marry this Jewish woman. He left her and we never did get his permission to publish the letters. To show he was so desperately in love with a white woman would nullify all he had said and written." t Ironically, three ' of the letters were published in "Soul On Ice." In the chapter headed "Prelude to Love — Three Letters," the woman is identified as Beverly Axelrod, now a San Francisco attorney. No mention is made that Mrs. Axelrod 'is either Jewish or white. The let- ters were sent in 1965 while Cleaver was in Folsom Prison. Out of the business now, Delacorte skims maybe five books a week, reading one thoroughly. But he reads them like a producer or playwright viewing another's play. "I read the first chapter, I dig around here and there. I analyze whether it will sell or not, and why. It's habit. You be- come a perfectionist about the art." The business is not the same, he said. "I think the ability to go into the publishing business the way I did is a thing of the past." Back then, it was a business that didn't require too much capital. "You hired a printer, bought some paper, got a few articles together, and if you had the gift of gab, you could manage to get credit." Delacorte, whose parents both were attorneys, was in his 20s when he started out with a thing called, "Sweetheart Stories," which he edit- ed himself . These were romantic English tales "translated into the American language," which meant the postmistress who lived in the vil- lage and married the duke's son be- came the stenographer in the city who married the boss' son. When the public appetite for pulp romance and adventure became sat- ed, the presses began spewing out movie magazines, crossword puz- zles and comic books. Woody Wood- pecker, Donald Duck, Porky Pig — all stars in the Dell stable. At one time, Dell was the largest publisher of this kind of juvenile fare. Over 300 million a year before TV killed it all with its animated cartoon capers. "We published all the Disney characters," Delacorte said. "Dur- ing the hard times, we kept him (Disney) in business. We paid him $10,000 a month in royalties." Then in the '40s, Delacorte struck off on a new adventure. A frequent visitor to Europe, he was fascinated by the low-priced, paperbound books. "Most books in Europe were published first in paperback," he said. "If you liked it, you then had it bound . The problem in the States was dis- tribution. Book sellers didn't want to handle these bastardized magazine - books. But because Delacorte was a big magazine publisher, he nudged his wholesalers to add the new publi- cations to their stock. They popped up in drug stores, su- permarkets, and the biggest outlet of all -- train terminals. Within 10 years, the breakthough came. A few years later, Delacorte branched out again, this time in hardcover publi- cations. It was he who signed some of the biggest names ever published by Dell -- Irwin Shaw, James Baldwin, Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's icono- clastic attitude appealed to De- lacorte. He is an unusual writer and an equally unusual man. The first Vonnegut title published by Dell went over the top. "He had worked for other publish- ers before us, "' Delacorte said, "but he was never successful till he came to Dell. He was able to buy himself a house, which he did next door to our office so he could watch his money come in. " To be sure, there were lots of mis- takes along the way. "Some cost millions, " Delacorte said. He admittedly blew "The Godfa- ther" project. Dell had the reprint rights sewn up. But when, as part of the deal, the hardback publisher friail + 'From C l them "what they could do with it." History now tells us "Godfather" A S0`1 something like 14 million copies. The first to run Xaviera Holland- er, prostitute -turned -author, Dell made a nice profit off her first book, but cooled when she wanted to come out with a second. Another company moved in and issued three or four U Publ, 011 Dell a second book more money-makers under her Delacorte thought stunk, he told name. WITH.,. WHEELS OO OFF RETAIL! LUGGAGE Available in Saddle Tan, Melon, Avocado, Lt. Blue, Red, Black & Cordovan. 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So did Time - Life. Then a year . later Annenburg bought it. Today it sells something like 21 million copies a week." It's a big money business today -- publishing. And a lot of it is a gam- ble. , "In the early days of paper- backs, when they sold for 25 or 35 cents, the amount you paid the ori- Turn to DELACORTE, C3 G1 T I+CR WIT[+ LO E: Mother's Day, May 8th SUNDRESSING A 44 _j. WIT,H RUFFLES ,� .�SIZES 14% to 2 4% Remember Mom, Wife or i`"' `' someone else who's mighty special to you. Floral prints % always look fresh and crisp. A Light and airy polyester//cotton ruffled su ndress in multi -print on white background. Exclusively yours at Lane Bryant by Harmony -Division of Bret Devin. • AY 4 N PALM BEACH MALL Phone: 683-6255 Daily 10 to 9; Sunday 12 to 5:30 Use Lane Bryant Charge, Master Charge or BankAmericard. Delacorte From C2 ginal publisher was small," De- lacorte said. Now the figures sound like the payoff in the state lottery. It's a huge, expensive game of high bid. A book is placed on the auction block with a minimum bid. ( "Fifty thou for this one, what do you offer?") It's all done by phone, with a week to reply. Through the bidding process, the prices gradually shot up from $10,000 to a million. "For a major book, you may have to put down half -a -million dollars," Delacorte said. "The smaller publishers (not like Dell) were behind the eight ball. They couldn't compete. " According to Delacorte, Bantam paid $1.8 million for "Ragtime. " And talk in the industry is that Ban- tam's going to take a bath. De- lacorte thinks the company will wind up losing hundreds of thousands on that one. "Even if you're a big publisher, you buy three or four big ones and lose half -a -million on each, and you're out of the business." A best seller in hardback is 50, 000, Delacorte said. Most don't go over 5, 000 or 8, 000. The money is in the reprint rights: motion picture, radio, TV, foreign language and the big- gest bonanza of all — paperbacks. But paperback people have to play a high numbers game. Sell less than 100,000 and you lose your shirt. "Rich Man, Poor Man" and "Roots" paved a new direction for TV treatment of books. One feeds upon the other. A book is popular so it sells to TV. The TV show is aired and book sales leap upward again. In the case of "Roots, " it seems to be backfiring. Author Alex Haley is in the process of suing hardback publisher Doubleday & Co. Haley claims he lost out on sales because Doubleday failed to adequately stock the bookstores of the nation. He is asking for $5 million in damages from Doubleday and that the con- tract with Dell be canceled. According to Delacorte, it's not all that simple. "Fourteen years ago, Haley went to Doubleday who ad- vanced him several thousand dollars on the book. He went through the money, the book wasn't completed and Doubleday figured the money was lost. "Dell came along and said we'd like to chip in $6, 000 or $7, 000. Of course, Doubleday was glad to get some of its money back. " In the meantime, Delacorte says, some guy came along with the idea for a TV show. He paid Doubleday several thousand, did a relatively in- expensive pilot, but no one bit. "Finally, ABC decided to take a chance on it," Delacorte said. The result, of course, was the biggest success in the history of the medi- um. And the book sold over 1.5 mil- lion in hardback, a record for such a short period of time. As to the claim that Doubleday was negligent in not getting out 'the books, Delacorte said, "I know it had two other plants working on the � book, as well. I think it's a cry in n the wilderness. Haley would like to w renegotiate his contract because he got the lowest rate. But you have to remember, he was not a f amous writer before `Roots' came out It's easy to cast the publisher in the bad guy role, said Delacorte. "But there are more publishing houses taken advantage of by au- thors. The hardback house that pays out advances of $2 million a year0nd going to lose between $20010 de- $300, 000 on books that are never livered or are so lousy or so libelous you can't print them. Retired now, Delacorte is out of those battles. His energies are di- rected elsewhere -- in tennis, art and his philanthropies, which he re- fuses to talk about. But his generosi- ty is on public display in New York City and elsewhere. For instance, he is the prime benefactor of the Delacorte Theater in Central Park where Joseph Papp stages his annual summer Shakes- peare Festival. He is the man who commissioned the bronze grouping of Alice In Wonderland" characters at the north end of the , park's Conservatory Lake. And he is the man who con- ceived of and paid for the execution of that whimsical carousel clock in the portal to the Park Zoo . I He is a f ascinating man, a mar- velous conversationalist who worries about his memory f ading . His ad- miring wife Valerie, a former Hun- garian actress, says, There is an utter simplicity to him. It's his car- ing about human values and no material things. He has a childlike approach to life and people, and a marvelous joy for living.