“ 47 ” NEW MAGAZINE OWNED BY CONTRIBUTORS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25092, 25 January 1947, Page 3

“ 47 ” NEW MAGAZINE OWNED BY CONTRIBUTORS

Literary Views And

Reviews

This year is to produce, quite soon, a new American magazine of a tvne that artists and writers have often longed for. The contributors will own and conduct it; they will have no advertising; they will finance it take their pay as contributors, and share the profits. The March of “’47” will be out in February. r t is published by Associated Magazine Contributors’ Inc self-described as “a publishing 'house owned by writers, artists, and photographers. ’ The magazine’s 340 owners. outstanding names in literary and artistic circles, have pooled their money and their talent, investing between 500 and 5000 dollars each. James Ellison, editor and publisher of "47. ’ is confident that this will be the first such venture to get out of the nice idea’’ stage. He recalled in an interview recently that William Makepeace Thackeray had nursed a similar project m 1840. But realising that if his proposed magazine failed, he alone would be responsible for its finances. Thackeray struck to his novels and lectures and let the dream ride by. , Por “ ie , rl y . a staff writer for the 4 ,J*■'T a s Digest,” editor in chief of ’ anc * managing editor of ‘Collier s.” Mr Ellison came to the conclusion that somewhere along the mass-circulation magazine circuit the contributor missed his due. Magazines are read because of their creative content. The artist, working with typewriter. pallet, or camera, is therefore the most important factor —but the profit from his work goes past him. Why not let the artist own the medium through which his work is marketed and hire the technicians? In other words, why not form a writers’ co-operative?

Friends and fellow-workers encouraged Mr Ellison. He went ahead. 45 per cent. Answered

“I picked a list of 200 writers,” he recalled. “I took novelists from John Steinbeck to Christopher Morley, commentators from Walter Lippmann to Jay Franklin, short story writers from Vardis Fisher to Ellery Queen. I asked if they would be interested in such a co-operative. Ordinarily, 5 per cent, response to mailing queries is good. I hit 43 per cent., got 86 replies. "Then I slammed down on them. They were interested. Okay. I asked, would they back it up with cash and woulji they do some work for it? By December. 1945. we were incorporated; by February 1. 1946, we opened up our office, and on November 18 we stopped selling stock.” Each stockholder, regardless of his investment, has only one vote. The business manager is responsible to the board of directors, which includes John Hersey, also president of the corporation: Christopher LaFarge. Robert St. John, Clifton Fadiman, Elmer Davis, and George Biddle. John Whiting, managing editor, was formerly editor-in-chief of “Popular Photography.” Walter Ross, general and business manager, was assistantpublisher of a trade magazine. Lawrence Lee. literary editor, was as-sistant-editor of “Reader’s Scope” and editor-in-chief of the “Virginia Quarterly Review.” Seek Mass Readership

With a minimum national subscription and newsstand circulation of 318.000. Mr Ellison declared, the pocket-size magazine, at 35 cents a copy, will not only be a success but also give the reader his money’s worth. Fiction, non-fiction, reporting, shorts, biographies, and news summaries will be interspersed with photographs, reproductions of paintings, cartoons, and sketches. “We are aiming.” he said, “for a mass, rather than class, readership.” “ ’47” will carry no ads. The recent defection of the newspaper “PM” from a no-advertising policy left Mr Ellison unperturbed. The magazine’s competitors, “Reader's Digest” and “Coronet.” with respectively 11,000.000 and 4.000.000 circulation, he pointed out. carry no advertising. As far as he is concerned, “ ’47” may become defunct, but will never take ads. The magazine’s intellectual level, Mr Ellison said, will be a cross between that of the “New Yorker” and “Time.” Its only censorship “will be reason and good taste.” “ ’47” will be open to all authors and artists, stockholders or not. • Name to Change Yearly All contributors will receive the same payment: first, an on-acceptance payment of 10 cents a word for prose, 50 dollars a page for art; second, an annual division to all contributors, according to their spate, of a contributors’ fund, which will consist of onethird of all profits before taxes. Stockholders’ -dividends will come from the remaining profits. The first three issues are already in production. Among the stockholders are Ogden Nash. John Dos Passos. Mary Petty, Sigmund Spaeth, Olin Downs, Russel Crouse. Harry A. Overstreet, and Raymond Swing. “Nothing short of an investment from G. B. Shaw would be astonishing,” Mr Ellison confided. “And we aren’t ready for foreign investors yet.”

MINUTE TRAVELLER Through the length and breadth of the Rhine country the vintage was begun. The red ruins on the heights, the white-walled villages, white Saint Nepomuc upon the bridges, were but isolated high notes of contrast in a landscape, sleepy and indistinct under the flood .of sunshine, with a headiness in it like that of must, of the new wine. The noise of the vineyards came through the lovely haze, still, at times, with the sharp sound of a bell -death-bell, perhaps, or only a crazy summons to the vintagers. And amid those broad, willowy reaches of the Rhine at length, from Bingen to Mannheim, where the brown hills wander into airy, blue distance, like a little picture of paradise, he felt that France was at hand. Before him lay the road thither, easy and straight.—That well of light so close! —WALTER PATER: "Imaginary Portraits.” The British Museum is taking steps to replace the 20G.000 books it lost from bombing in the war, says the “Observer.” The most valuable books were sent away into safe storage, but it was impossible- to move the whole vast collection, and some sections were badly hit. Lists of the missing volumes are being prepared; the cooperation of the book trade and the public will then be sought in filling the gaps, either by gift or by purchase. In the replacement of foreign books Denmark has set a generous example which other countries, it is hoped, will be inspired to follow. Of the thousand or so missing Danish books over half have already been restored by free gift, and before long the Danes hope to provide the museum with the rest.

“On Friday [November 22] it will be 30 years since Jack London died by his own hand,” wrote “Atticus” in the “Sunday Times” on November 17. “I remember him vividly from my first visit to the United States. He was then at the height of his popularity a nd was making fifteen to twenty thousand pounds a year by his pen and spending thirty. “‘The Call of the Wild’ brought him world fame. He wrote it in thirty days at the end of 1902. His ■writing career was crowded into the sixteen years from 1900 to 1916. He made a fortune, changed his whole banner of living, bought himself a huge ranch, and overspent himself in *very form of extravagance. ‘I do not know how far he is still read in the United States and in this country his books were hard to come by during the war. But there is one country in which his sales exceed ”} ose of any other foreign writer. That is Russia, where between 1917 and 1942 6,428,000 copies of his works were sold in Russian editions —more than three times Dickens's Russian sales.”