The Glottologist's New Edition

Leon Shimkin, a voluble and supremely confident Brooklyn bookkeeper who rose to become a major force in the publishing business, delights in inventing words. One of his favorites is "bookazine," meaning a soft-cover book marketed like a magazine. Putting that word to work, Shimkin and three other men in 1939 founded his Pocket Books, Inc., the world's most voluminous softback-book producer, with an annual sale of $20 million from its 20% slice of the mass paperback market in the U.S. Another Shimkin word is "biblio-therapeutic," meaning books that help people. With such books, notably Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People (12 million copies sold in all editions), Shimkin has helped to build Simon & Schuster, in which he is a partner, into one of the nation's heartiest publishers specializing in hardback books.

At 59, Glottologist Shimkin loves his ledgers at least as much as his books, says that he aims to combine "the creative art of publishing with the science of commerce." Last week he completed a deal that, by combining his assets, makes him stronger than ever. Without spending a penny of his own, he arranged to buy out 69-year-old M. Lincoln Schuster, his partner in Simon & Schuster, and merged that company into Pocket Books, Inc. To do this, Shimkin first had S. & S. take $2,000,000 from its operating funds, pay it to Schuster for his half of the company. That gave Shimkin control over 100% of S. & S. stock, which he then turned over to publicly owned Pocket Books in return for 320,000 shares of its stock, worth $1,640,000. Whereas Shimkin previously owned only 46% of Pocket Books and 50% of S. & S., he now winds up with more than 51% of the merged company, which he calls "the new, revised, enlarged edition of S. & S."

Shimkin thus follows an industry-wide trend toward consolidation between hard and soft publishers. The new enlarged S. & S. will be in a more powerful position to bid for blockbusting authors, whose contracts have been escalating as rapidly as those of prize pro football rookies. In combination, Simon & Schuster and Pocket Books will be better able to assure authors of bonuses for softback reprint rights, while the publishing firm will be able to get those rights without paying fat fees to its hardback competitors.

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