In 1942, Barclay Acheson, director of the Reader's Digest's International Editions, started for Stockholm to set up a Swedish-language edition. En route, his flying boat crashed on the take-off from Botwood, Newfoundland, and broke in half. The front half sank immediately. Acheson was saved only because he had stepped to the rear of the plane for a smoke just before the crash. This half stayed afloat long enough for him to be rescued. He took up his interrupted trip a week or so later.
This week Acheson was off for Europe again by plane to start another Digest foreign edition. As far as the project itself was concerned, the hazards this time were even greater. The Digest plans to print 500,000 German-language copies a month in Munich, sell them in the American and British zones, starting next February. As there is little paper in the occupied zones, and as no money from those zones may be spent outside them, Acheson plans to print another German-language edition of 100,000 copies for sale in Switzerland. Then he hopes to use revenue from the Swiss sales to buy U.S. paper for Germany's edition.
Risks: Routine. These formidable risks are routine in the Digest's foreign ventures. The first one, a British edition of 85,000, was launched in December 1938.
But Digest Editor DeWitt Wallace soon learned that in other countries the low standard of living put the price (25¢) out of reach of mass buyers.
So Wallace decided to slash the price, make up the difference by taking ads. This was tried in a Spanish-language edition for Latin America in December 1940. It sold so well (it now guarantees 1,000,000 circulation) that the Digest has followed it with 13 other editions* in eight different languages. The editorial content is the same as the U.S. edition (circ. 8,000,000) but more so: it is further digested, to about two-thirds the domestic size.
Despite their whopping circulation of over 4,000,000 and their tiny U.S. staff of only 27, the foreign editions combined have yet to show a profit.
Profit: the Exception. By the end of this year, they will have lost an estimated $1,750,000. The only ones expected to make money this year are the Spanish and Scandinavian editions—and that profit will be Digest size. But Editor Wallace thinks he has licked the biggest trouble—high foreign printing costs—by means of a new press the Digest has spent $400,000 developing. With this, and more ads, he expects to cut his foreign edition losses to $200,000 in 1948, break even in 1949, make money in 1950.
*For Portugal, Sweden, Canada (French and English), Egypt, Finland, Japan, Australia, Denmark, France, Belgium, Switzerland (French) and Norway.