Fastest-Selling Book

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Wendell Willkie's One World (Simon and Schuster, $1 and $2) got off last week to the fastest start of any book in the memory of U.S. booksellers. It easily outstripped Gone With the Wind, How to Win Friends and Influence People and Your Income Tax. Within eight days, there were half a million copies in print, breaking all records.

The book was selling at the rate of 50,000 copies a day. . It was being produced from four sets of plates and at two binderies. Rights were already sold for British, Swedish and Spanish editions. Bound galley proofs had been auctioned for $100,000 worth of war bonds to Mr. Julius Klorfein, who also bought Jack Benny's violin for $1,000,000 in bonds (TIME, March 8). Rival publishers grudgingly guessed that the book might sell 5,000,000 copies. (Record-breaker G.W.T.W. sold 3,000,000.) Simon and Schuster feared paper problems after the first 1,000,000.

Said Max Schuster, Mr. Willkie's co-publisher: "We are struck by the crusading fervor of the people who buy One World."