Literary Prodigy

Random House had so many literary children it didn't know what to do. Its latest offspring, the 25¢ "Wonder Books" for children, had sold 2,000,000 copies in six weeks, and threatened to keep Random House so busy that it would not have time for other books. Yet it hated to curb such a promising child. Last week, Random House found a solution. It sold the children's books to Wonder Books, Inc., a new company owned jointly by reprint publishers Grosset & Dunlap (60%) and the Curtis Publishing Co. (40%).

The deal gave Grosset and Curtis, already teamed up in the distribution of Bantam Books (25¢), a new punch to throw at their big competitors, Marshall Field's Simon & Schuster (which puts out the 25¢ Golden Books for children) and his Pocket Books.

Grosset's President John O'Connor took on the job of running Wonder Books himself. O'Connor has always been a man with a sharp eye for selling. As vice president of Chicago's Quarrie Corp., he helped sell a million copies of the Book of Knowledge. At Grosset, it was he who started Bantam Books. O'Connor thinks that the potential market for Wonder Books (which have hard, washable-plastic covers) is 100 million copies. To cash in on it, he expects to increase the list of 16 titles (including Mother Goose, Peter Rabbit and The Three Little Kittens) by adding new books every month.