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Publishers Gave Away 123 Million Books During World War Two
An anonymous reader writes Information wants to be free? During the Second World War, it actually was. Publishers took advantage of new printing technologies to sell crates of cheap, paperback books to the military for just six cents a copy, at a time when almost all the other books they printed cost more than two dollars. The army and the navy shipped them to soldiers and sailors around the world, giving away nearly 123 million books for free. Many publishers feared the program would destroy their industry, by flooding the market with free books and destroying the willingness of consumers to pay for content. Instead, it fueled a postwar publishing boom, as millions of GIs got hooked on good books, and proved willing to pay for more. It's a freemium model, more than 70 years ago.
I think servicemen in WWII were paying a large enough price
6 cents a book at current prices seems more like Amazon's discounted books business model. So it's not exactly free. Hell even brick and mortar stores conduct cut-price "sales". And at war time, reading books would have been a luxury both at home and at the battlefield. So selling them at the cost of production or at lost is more likely investing for the future loyalty of customers.
So many damn kids these days use the idiotic phrase "Oh, I don't read" whenever I try to recommend a good book.
Excuse me? Reading for pleasure is one of those things that opens up your mind to new possibilities, that is a window into a new world, that doesn't result in the brainrot of modern TV programming.
So many US Soldiers spend all their free time playing video games. (source: was in the US Army for 4 years)
Get off of work? Play video games. Weekend? Play video games and drink booze. Rinse repeat.
The majority don't take advantage of the educational benefits while in the service, don't take the initiative to research things themselves. I knew more about Field Artillery then the vast majority of my unit while being a paperpusher because I'd look things up.
Regardless of the ease of access to books, if picking up a console controller takes less effort, that's what people will gravitate towards.
Watching countless of hours of TV shows on netflix, playing Call of Duty for hours on end, there is no critical thinking. It's just accepting prepackaged crap.
Books though, they help to open the mind. I'm not saying that reading books automatically make a person a genius who succeeds at everything, but they do make you think. Any thinking is better than no thinking.
6 cents in 1943 was roughly the same as 83 cents now, and $2.00 then would be a whopping $27.54 today.
It's a freemium model, more than 70 years ago.
How?
They were given out for FREE, now "freemium" means the game is "free" but you are inundated with "in app purchases", so free but not really free.
I'm missing the part where the book demanded payment to be able to read past page 5 or some nonsense.
The tobacco companies went after servicemen in WW1 & WW2; got several generations addicted to smoking.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
and the college price was X100 higher
This illustrates how new technologies enable phenomena which are not as revolutionary as some people like to claim.
True, they are making an impact and they can be important, and from time to time there are genuine novelties, but most things that are nauseatingly overhyped these days are something old but "on a computer!".
Social media, for example, was trumpeted as enabling the Arab Spring, and, yes, it's role was significant, but it was not qualitatively different from movements that in the past used audio tape, telegraph, letters, printing press, people sailing, people walking, etc.
"Information wants to be free" is incredibly misunderstood.
First, it is information, and does not want anything. It cannot want anything.
Second, when someone learns something, their first instinct is to share it. Arcade game cheat, little known factoid, best restaurant in a different city, how to apply blush, or really anything that someone deems significant.
Third, publishers took hardcover books and printed them sideways on a magazine press. This was to reduce the loss on the discount.
Fourth, the intent apparently was to make readers of men. This is a business model, unrelated to what information wants or does not want. Whether they covered costs or not, publishers got a huge bulk order which may have sold for 25 cents instead of 200 cents.
I did not read the Council on Books in Wartime link, but I assume that's what people here want to actually discuss.
Nonetheless, this is unrelated to information wanting to be free. Please, just make a goddamned effort to understand words before using them.
Does patriotism today only count if you're in the military? The way we glorify military service over all types of contribution / sacrifice for the national interest is pretty amazing these days. It's like the movies have brainwashed us into believing that soldiers are the only national heroes around.
Not all contributions / sacrifice are equivalent. There *is* something different about putting one's own life on the line. And the reason military service is considered in such high regard today is that for many years of very recent history putting on the uniform included a high probability of a combat deployment.
That said, even in a time of peace there is some risk. Military personnel die in training. Plus there is the ever present chance that a war will occur. One of my high school teachers joined the Marines during peacetime and a couple of years later found himself fighting on Guadalcanal, short on ammo, short on food, short on support from the Navy, and ordered to hold his position at all costs.
Many people find themselves in terrible dangerous situations and rise to the occasion, but soldiers, police, fireman, etc volunteer for such risks knowingly. Volunteering to go into harms way is a little different from accidentally finding ones self in harms way. Are these people exclusively in uniform, no, for example there were civilians that safely made it out of the world trade center but went back in to help others. That is another example of volunteering to go into harms way.
World War II starts, and a group of publishers, paper manufacturers, editors [and] librarians get together in New York. And they decide that men serving in the Army and Navy need something to read. ... They printed over 1,000 titles of different books, and they sent over a million copies of these books to sailors and soldiers serving overseas and also to [prisoners of war] in prison camps in Japan and Germany through an arrangement with the Red Cross.
The greatest distribution of the Armed Services Editions was on the eve of D-Day. Eisenhower's staff made sure that every guy stepping onto a landing craft in the south of England right on the eve of D-Day would have an Armed Services Edition in his pocket. They were sized as long rectangles meant to fit in the servicemen's pockets. (Her assertion was it was this service which reintroduced American's to Gatsby)
--Maureen Corrigan talking about her book, So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
Yeah, sure. But most of the people in the military are hardly putting their lives on the line. They're working in warehouses, changing tires, sitting at a desk doing analysis. I find it amusing / annoying / ignorant when random people go up to someone in uniform and "thank you for your sacrifice". That's part of the brainwashing of the public to believe that military = heroes. For every 1 hero there are 100 normal unremarkable people. Just like in regular life. Why do we treat all the military like they're the 1% ?
Basically because the 99% can very suddenly find themselves a part of the 1%.
Don't be so quick to judge someone by their occupational specialty. Let me explain it to you the way a WW2 paratrooper explained it to me when I was a kid: "Don't trust the TV commercials that the military is a good place to learn a trade, like electronics, its not that simple. Every person entering the military spends some time crawling around in the mud with a rifle learning to fight. Its not some hazing ritual. When the shit hits the fan and things get desperate the cooks, clerks and mechanics are told to pick up a weapon and fight. Regardless of what job you are expecting to have in the military, don't sign up unless you are willing to pick up that weapon and fight."
This former paratrooper then told me about the truck driver he shared a frozen hole in the ground with while on the front line defending Bastogne. The truck driver was part of group that made a dangerous last minute supply run into the city before it was completely surrounded, after delivering the supplies they were told to pick up rifles and reinforce some paratroopers that were spread out very thinly. The paratrooper's brother was a clerk in the Navy. He was assigned to a destroyer in the Pacific. When the ship went to general quarter, getting ready to fight, he put away the typewriter and ledger books and manned a 40mm bofors cannon. That high school teacher I mentioned earlier, the Marine on Guadalcanal, he was wounded but instead of being medically discharged he was assigned to various army company headquarters units in Europe as a translator. While preparing his discharge paperwork someone noticed that he spoke fluent German, his fate changed. Another high school teacher was a Marine in Vietnam. He was an electronics tech with a desk job on base. Then one day he was told he would be accompanying a force recon team into enemy territory to set up sensors on a jungle road to detect enemy supply convoys. These jungle roads were under a heavy tree canopy so aerial observation was not possible.
Don't be so quick to judge clerks, truck drivers, electronics techs, etc.
The Germans also had the Winter Charity (Winterhilfswerk), which printed millions of books for German soldiers, both propaganda and stories, humor, songbooks, etc.
I wouldn't be too surprised if the Brits and the Russians did something similar.
Brits did. My dad was in WW2, I remember seeing some Army issue paperbacks in the family bookshelves back in Surrey.
Brits also did free concerts (anyone else read 'The Cruel Sea'?) and suchlike. ENSA was the organization (can't remember what the acronym was for). I guess the UK equivalent of whatever organization sent Bob Hope around the world, entertaining the troops for the US.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Yeah, sure. But most of the people in the military are hardly putting their lives on the line. They're working in warehouses, changing tires, sitting at a desk doing analysis.
I hate to break the news to you, but you are very ignorant.
Take your example of comparing a soldier to a guy working at Bell Tire or some Amazon shipping. Sure, not all soldiers are deployed to a combat theater, but all soldiers must be trained and capable of being deployed. This means training. Lots and lots of training, which is often quite dangerous. Have you ever seen a person fall 70 feet repelling as part of their duty at jiffy lube? How about a guy at Bell Tire get his face shredded by a weapon malfunction at a range training for combat? The guy at Amazon risks a tank not seeing him and killing him while he's working at Amazon? None of those things real or realistic
That's not to imply you should give military people sympathy, we still have an all voluntary military in the US. People going in know the risks, just like a police officer in a big city knows their risks. You should however respect that these men and women regularly risk life and limb so that they are ready to protect you from enemies at all times, even if they are not out directly engaging foreign armies/militants every day.
For every 1 hero there are 100 normal unremarkable people.
Yet another completely ignorant statement. Every military person gives up rights as a citizen for the duration of their military career. This is not optional, and there is no choice that is not criminal. If you defy the orders and regulation, you spend hard time in a penitentiary and are dishonorably discharged from the military. Go ahead and try to get a job with that on your application.
As a veteran, I speak from experience and first hand knowledge. I was not deployed to an active combat zone, but was on the ready line numerous times and saw people die from all of the examples I gave above. You don't recognize the sacrifice because you have never made the same sacrifice, and never bothered to consider what a person gives up to serve in the Military.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Except the military hasn't really protected us from enemies in a while. The role has been largely stirring up hornets' nests for short term political or financial gain. Putting your life on the line is not itself worthy of praise.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
"Liberty Cabbage" was the nom-de-nonsensical-nationalism in those days.
People vastly misunderestimate the riskiness of various occupations in the US.
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/22/6...
And when the Construction worker joins their trade they give up all of their Constitutional rights? His foreman can come to his house without warning and inspect his house and go through all of his belongings when ever the foreman feels like it? The construction worker can be forced to work for several days at a time without any breaks to sleep? The same construction worker can go to jail for telling his boss he's not happy with working for several days at a time without a break? The construction worker quitting his job is a felony and he will go to jail if he walks out?
Substitute any other profession for construction worker above, with the obvious exception of a US Armed forces job, and the answers all remain the same. These are the facts every military person deals with every day while they serve. Your ad hominem is useless against facts.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Well, I registered for the Selective Service when I turned 18. I agreed--up front--to go into harms way as needed. I also pledged allegiance to the country every day for years as a child in America's public schools. I think I meet your dubious criteria for canonization.