Word: cerf
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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Inevitably, the blossoming of the book industry has attracted hungry investors. "Those Wall Street houses are after all of us to go public," says Random House President Bennett Cerf. "They go around waving certified checks in publishers' faces-and I've never seen a publisher yet that could resist a certified check." Ran dom House could not resist, put some 222,060 shares of its stock on sale last October for 11¼. It was eagerly snapped up, now sells for about $31. Harcourt, Brace stock first went on the market last summer at 23½, is selling...
...publishers commit non-books, but some do it more than others. One of the most persistent is Bernard Geis, who operates as a kind of non-publisher, distributing his wares through Bennett Cerf's Random House, and setting up shop to promote non-books, including those of backers Art Linkletter (The Secret World of Kids) and Groucho Marx (Groucho and Me). Says Geis: "I want to do anything that can be done to get the audience back to books." Then he adds, less piously: "I don't care what kind of book...
Former employees of Alfred A. (for Abraham) Knopf, a publisher with the appearance and manner of a retired Cossack sergeant, recall that on the frequent occasions when Knopf was displeased, he would rumble: "If this keeps up, I'm going to sell to Bennett Cerf." At last, without a frown, Knopf has sold. The price, according to Random House President Cerf: in the neighborhood of 135,000 shares of Random House stock, worth roughly $3,000,000. Knopf and his wife Blanche, an aloof, astringent woman who is the firm's president (her husband is chairman), will still...
Bubbles Bennett A. (for Alfred) Cerf, 61, about the deal with Knopf, who is all of six years older: "It's been a dream since I was in college. When I went into publishing, this man was my ideal. Why, it's almost like having a favorite professor and then joining him on the faculty...
Face to Face. Despite the merger's logic, the Knopf-Random alliance has its startling side. In an era of increasingly faceless publishers, Alfred Knopf and Bennett Cerf are among the few who are known outside the trade, but their personalities are remarkably different...