Cornwall and Pleasantville, New York · Early 1939
The Big Book went to press on credit and the thickest paper in the shop, timed to a magazine article nobody had checked on.
“Well, Mr. Managing Editor, we are all ready to shoot.”
Early in 1939 the loan copies of the book came back with their suggestions. Hank P. copied every correction by hand into one mimeograph, and that marked-up copy became the printer’s copy. Bill W. admitted it was “hardly legible.”
Hank and Bill took it to Edward Blackwell, president of the Cornwall Press. They were still thinking in carloads, because an editor at the Reader’s Digest had said he was almost sure the magazine would run a piece. Blackwell suggested 5,000 copies. Hank offered $500 down. Blackwell, as Bill remembered it, asked, “What about that Rockefeller connection?” They said they were holding it in reserve. He agreed anyway.
The price came out of long arguments. Some members wanted a $1.00 book, others $2.50. Hank held out for $3.50, so the book could pay for an office and pay back its shareholders. As a consolation, they told Blackwell to use the thickest paper in his shop. The book came out so bulky that it was called the Big Book. The idea, Bill wrote, was to convince the alcoholic buyer “that he was indeed getting his money’s worth!”
At the plant in Cornwall, New York, Hank, Bill, Ruth Hock and Dorothy S. of Cleveland checked into the town’s only hotel and corrected galleys day after day. The hotel bill came to twice the cash they had. Hank said God would provide. Bill went to New York and asked Charles B. Towns, who paid the bill and gave them about a hundred dollars more.
Only then did Hank and Bill drive back to the Digest, in Pleasantville. The managing editor, Kenneth Payne, didn’t remember them, and when Hank said they were ready, he answered, “Shoot what?” His editors had turned the story down, he explained, and he had forgotten to tell them. Riding home, Bill counted about a hundred members, and soon 5,000 books in a warehouse with no market.
It’s early 1939, at a hotel in Cornwall, New York. Hank P., Bill W., Ruth Hock and Dorothy S. are correcting galleys of a book so marked up that the plant manager nearly sent them home to retype it.
They have ordered five thousand copies, with five hundred dollars down, on the thickest paper in the shop. The hotel bill comes to twice the cash they have. Charles Towns pays it.
Then Hank and Bill drive up to the Reader’s Digest. Months before, its managing editor said he was almost sure the magazine would run a piece. Hank tells him they’re all ready to shoot.
“Shoot what?” the editor asks. His editors turned the story down, and he forgot to tell them.
On the way home they do the sums. About a hundred members. Five thousand books. No market at all.
In order
The printing, the price and the hotel bill all rested on one article. Nobody asked the magazine about it until the books were nearly ready.
All from Bill W.’s account in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 1957, written eighteen years later.
Fall 1938
To help sell shares in the book, Hank and Bill drove to Pleasantville. Kenneth Payne of the Reader’s Digest said he was almost sure the magazine would want the story, though he had to ask his editors. He told them to let him know when the book was ready, in the spring.
Nobody got back in touch with him
Bill W., 1957
Early 1939
With the article in mind, they ordered from the Cornwall Press. Edward Blackwell suggested 5,000 copies and took $500 down. The price was fixed at $3.50, on the thickest paper in the shop.
The printer would carry them for months
Bill W., 1957
Early 1939
They corrected galleys at the town’s only hotel until the bill was twice the cash they had. Charles B. Towns paid it, with about a hundred dollars to spare, and Hank, Ruth and Bill split the hundred.
They thought “prosperity was just around the corner”
Bill W., 1957
Early 1939
Back in Pleasantville, Payne had forgotten them. His editors had decided few readers would care about a society of alcoholics, and that the subject was controversial in medicine and religion. He had never told them.
The printing was ready in April 1939
Bill W., 1957
Nobody asked
The whole printing was timed to an article that had never been confirmed. Bill wrote that he would never know why none of them had thought to get in touch with the Digest sooner.
For a closer look
Two counts for the first printing; why it was the Big Book; and how the Reader’s Digest made up for it later.
Bill remembered Edward Blackwell suggesting 5,000 copies for the first printing, and he wrote of 5,000 books heading for the warehouse.
Most later histories give a smaller number: 4,730 copies, published April 10, 1939. Mitchell K.’s history of the book takes that date from the Copyright Office record. The Kitchen Table uses 4,730 too.
Lois W.’s memoir, published in 1979, agrees with Bill: they “had the nerve to order 5,000 copies,” and the chronology at the back of her book has 5,000 printed in April 1939.
Bill and Lois were remembering the order, decades later. None of the histories we used says where 4,730 comes from, so this page gives both.
Hank’s plan for the book company had figured $2.50 wholesale and $3.50 by mail. When it came time to set the price, some members wanted $1.00 and others $2.50. Hank argued that unless the book made money they could never run an office, “much less pay off the shareholders.”
He won. The losers got the thickest paper in Blackwell’s shop as a consolation, and the volume came out so bulky that it was known from then on as the Big Book.
The chronology in Lois W.’s memoir dates the turndown to March 1, 1939. In her telling, Bill and Hank came home “sad and weary” to tell the group, with a book they couldn’t get to a single drunk.
A note in AA Comes of Age adds that no publication had since been more generous to AA than the Reader’s Digest. It ran many articles about AA and helped translate its literature into other languages.
The article that finally came, in September 1939, was in Liberty magazine, whose editor was Fulton Oursler. Oursler later became a senior editor of the Digest and an AA trustee.