Books: Ballyhoo Biz
Many books published today get read most widely in digested magazine form.* This month readers were discovering a new wrinkle in literary digestion. The Book-of-the-Month Club announced a new literary short cut for those who wish to read books, but not whole books. Through King Features Syndicate, the Club will release its best-sellers in the form of cartoon strips: 24-30 cartooned installments per novel, with 500 words of text under each strip (about one-fifteenth of the published novel). The first cartoonovel is Anna Segher's The Seventh Cross, story of an escape from a Nazi concentration camp.
Saluting the new development, King Features' President J. V. Connolly cried: "Striking innovation!" Variety, ever detached, headlined the news: BOOK PUBLISHERS BORROW SHOW BIZ TACTICS IN HIGH-PRESSURE BALLYHOO.
* Omnibook magazine, for example, runs about one-quarter of original volumes, Reader's Digest slightly less.
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