The Selling of a Dictionary

In the fusty world of lexicography, new dictionaries are usually introduced with the quiet circumspection generally found in library reading rooms. Though Random House made a stab at mass promotion on its 1966 dictionary, such works rarely generate much publicity. The alltime exception to the rule is the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, which was brought out last September with the kind of hoopla usually reserved for new detergents. In four months, 440,000 copies were marketed. The dictionary became the biggest-selling hard-cover book published in 1969, ahead of Portnoy's Complaint and The Selling of the President.*

The co-publishers, American Heritage Publishing Co. and Houghton Mifflin Co., expect to move another 610,000 copies this year. Last week, capping one of the most successful book promotions in history, they sold the paperback rights to Dell Publishing Co. for $750,000, an exceptionally large soft-cover advance. The paperback edition will cost 75-c- and contain 55,000 words, compared with 155,000 in the hardcover dictionary, which sells for $7.95 in plain covers and $12.50 in deluxe binding.

Salty Flavor. The book, originally the idea of American Heritage President James Parton, took four years to produce. It is designed somewhat like the Petit Larousse, and has plenty of illustrations in the margins. An arcane glossary of Indo-European word roots lends it a patina of intellectuality, and a listing of almost all the outhouse and bawdyhouse four-letter verbs gives it a salty flavor. To comb out the neologisms and solecisms, the editors consulted a usage panel of 104 unpaid judges, mainly journalists and other writers. Among them: Russell Baker, Vermont Royster, Red Smith and Dwight Macdonald. The wisdom of this move, apart from the publicity it brought the book, became apparent with the rave reviews that followed, some of them by panelists.

A full year before publication, the two companies budgeted more than $1,000,000 for promotion. That is an astronomical sum for a book. Essentially the book is not much different from, say, the college edition of the Random House dictionary; both have 1,600 pages and include 155,000 words. The American Heritage publishers created an air of difference by plugging their usage panel, the glossary and the liberal use of illustrations. Booksellers were courted with personal sales calls and arresting ads in book journals. One ad showed a clutch of sullen teen-agers under the headline: "You don't buy your old man's ideas. Why buy your old man's dictionary?" By publication date, orders stood at 220,000.

Happy Graduation. In a rare use of television by the book trade, spot commercials bobbed up on Today, Tonight and other shows. Viewers were offered an unusual trade-in deal: If they bought the new book, they could send their old dictionary into Houghton Mifflin and get $1 back. The book's editor, William Morris, a onetime salesman who had a brief fling in summer stock, agreed to stay on after his contract expired and help with the promotion. He grew a silver Vandyke beard and plugged the book in a three-month whirlwind of appearances.

Though most critics gave the dictionary good marks, some argued that the Random House or Merriam-Webster dictionaries were better all-round books. The publishers do not brood over criticisms. Besides, the graduation season will soon begin, and that is one of the best-selling times of the year for the men who market dictionaries.

-Still, that is small potatoes when compared with the perennial bestseller, the King James Version of the Bible, which continued to sell an estimated 10 million volumes last year.

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