Continuity Marketing: Pleasures and Pitfalls

Macmillan

Ed Bakal left Grolier for Macmillan where he and Bill Houghton began offering The Harvard Classics, also known as Doc Elliott’s five-foot shelf of books. Professor Elliott of Harvard created a list of books that every literate person should read. Using old titles in public domain (e.g., “Huckleberry Finn”, “Plato’s Republic”, etc.)—and, in fact, using the original cruddy plates from the 1920s—Bakal and Houghton bound the series in elegant green “fibrated (ground up and reconstituted) leather” with gold stamping. The first volume (‘Two Years Before the Mast” or “Plato’s Republic”) was free; additional volumes were $4.95 plus shipping, sent at the rate of two a month.