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Speaking rather offhandedly, we are of opinion that not more than two living American writers of fiction have achieved anything like a 100 per cent. sale of their books. These are Harold Bell Wright and Gene Stratton-Porter.
I am indebted to Mr. Frank K. Reilly, president of the Reilly & Lee Company, Chicago, selling agents for the original editions of all Mr. Wright’s books, for the following figures:
“We began,” wrote Mr. Reilly, “with That Printer of Udell’s—selling, as I remember the figures, about 20,000. Then The Shepherd of the Hills—about 100,000, I think. Then the others in fast growing quantities. For The Winning of Barbara Worth we took four orders in advance which totalled nearly 200,000 copies. On When a Man’s a Man we took the biggest single order ever placed for a novel at full price—that is, a cloth-bound, ‘regular’ $1.35 book—250,000 copies from the Western News Company. The advance sale of this 1916 book was over 465,000.”
Mr. Reilly wrote at the beginning of March, 1919, from French Lick, Indiana. At that time Mr. Wright’s publishers had in hand a novel, The Re-Creation of Brian Kent, published August 21, 1919. They had arranged for a first printing of 750,000 copies and were as certain of selling 500,000 copies before August 1 as you are of going to sleep some time in the next twenty-four hours. It was necessary to make preparations for the sale of 1,000,000 copies of the new novel before August 21, 1920.
The sale of 1,000,000 copies of The Re-Creation of Brian Kent within a year of publication may be said to achieve a 100 per cent. circulation so far as existing book merchandising facilities allow.
The sale, within ten years, of 670,733 copies of Gene Stratton-Porter’s story, Freckles, approaches a 100 per cent. sale but with far too much retardation.