Reader's Digest

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Type: Private
On the web: http://www.rd.com
Employees: 4,700

One undersized magazine targets an oversized audience. The Reader's Digest Association (RDA) publishes the general-interest magazine Reader's Digest, which has 50 editions and is translated into some 20 languages. In addition to publishing its flagship title, RDA operates about 80 branded websites. It uses its extensive consumer database of more than 130 million names to market books (Reader's Digest Select Editions, how-to guides, cookbooks), special-interest magazines, music, videos, and financial and health products in some 80 countries. Suffering from a heavy debt-load amid a down economy, RDA filed Chapter 11 for its US businesses, which emerged from bankruptcy in 2010. It is owned by RDA Holding Co.

Key numbers for fiscal year ending December, 2010:
Sales: $1,714.0M
One year growth: 55.6%
Net income: $1,764.0M

Officers:
Chairman: Randall E. (Randy) Curran
President, CEO, and Director: Robert E. Guth
EVP and CFO: Paul R. Tomkins

Competitors:
Meredith Corporation
Rodale
Time Inc.

Incorporated: 1922
NAIC: 511130 Book Publishers; 454113 Mail-Order Houses; 511120 Periodical Publishers; 511140 Database and Directory Publishers

The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. is a worldwide publisher and distributor of magazines, books, recorded music, and home video packages, which are sold through a variety of distribution channels, including direct mail, display marketing, direct response television, catalogs, retail, and the Internet. Its major publication is the monthly general-interest magazine Reader's Digest, which is the world's most widely read magazine with a global readership of more than 100 million, and is available in 48 editions and 19 languages. The company also publishes numerous special-interest magazines and books that include do-it-yourself, cooking, health, gardening, and children's titles. To market its many products, the Reader's Digest Association uses an extensive consumer database that is considered to be one of the largest in the world.

Reader's Digest was founded in 1922 through the joint efforts of DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Acheson Wallace. DeWitt Wallace was born on November 12, 1889, in St. Paul, Minnesota, to a father who was a college professor and who later became president of Macalester College. Throughout his years of early adulthood, DeWitt Wallace read widely, and got in the habit of making notes from his reading to retain ideas. In a job handling inquiries about an agricultural textbook, he began wondering if his reading notes might be useful to others if published. Thus, he conceived the idea of condensing magazine articles and reprinting them in a digest magazine.

In the early 1900s, Wallace produced a 128-page book on farming, providing information about agricultural bulletins available to farmers. He sold 100,000 copies of the book by traveling through five states in an old car, selling the book to banks and feed stores that would give the book to customers as a gift. Due to his success with the book, he saw a market for that type of publication among the public as a whole, and sought to publish condensed versions of articles in a magazine form.

World War I temporarily interrupted Wallace's plans. In October 1918, he was severely wounded in battle in France. During his months of recuperation, he focused on reading from a variety of magazines, distilling the articles down to their essentials. On his return home to St. Paul, he continued to work on digesting other magazine articles, putting together 31 summarized articles in a sample of the type of digest magazine he thought would sell. The cost of printing the sample was paid for with money borrowed from his brother and father. He showed his sample to several publishing houses with the hope that they would use his idea and hire him as editor, but all of them turned him down.

In January 1922, Wallace finally published the magazine on his own, aided by his wife, Lila Bell Acheson Wallace. Acheson had been born in Canada in 1889, but spent most of her early life in the United States while her father preached in a number of midwestern towns. In 1921, she married DeWitt Wallace, and together they began selling his magazine idea to readers by direct mail. The couple rented an apartment in Greenwich Village in New York City, with Lila retaining her job as a social worker to pay the rent. DeWitt Wallace sent out letters to potential subscribers, offering his magazine idea for sale and promising a money-back guarantee if readers were not satisfied. These solicitations brought in 1,500 subscriptions at $3 each, generating enough money to finance the first edition and possibly the second.

The first edition of Reader's Digest was dated February 1922, and contained 64 pages. Its small measurements, about 5.5 inches by 7.5 inches, allowed readers to carry it in a pocket or purse and was a unique innovation among magazines at the time. The lead article was by Alexander Graham Bell and was on the importance of self-education as a lifelong habit.

DeWitt Wallace spent much of the magazine's first year in the New York Public Library reading articles to summarize in future issues, while Lila Wallace kept her job. The first edition was judged to be a success when there were no cancellations of subscriptions after its release. By September 1922, the couple was able to rent a garage and apartment for their editorial offices, choosing to live in Pleasantville, New York, where they had been married in 1921. Additional promotional letters brought in new subscribers, and within a year of its first edition, circulation had risen to 7,000. After four years, circulation was up to 20,000, and by 1929 it had risen to an astounding 216,000 subscribers.

Initially, Reader's Digest kept a low profile, partly for fear that envious magazines might stop allowing it to reprint their articles. DeWitt Wallace seemed to have a very good notion of what his readers wanted, and circulation continued to grow, reaching over one million in 1936 and three million in 1939. An edition began appearing in England in 1938. Due to the rapid increase in the size of operations, in 1939 the Wallaces moved their facilities to Chappaqua, New York, located close by, but retained their mailing address in Pleasantville, because of the euphonious nature of its name. The address has remained at Pleasantville ever since.

In 1950, condensed books under the Reader's Digest name first appeared. These books, which presented abbreviated versions of popular novels, were an immediate success. Therefore, nine years later the company diversified even further when a series of phonograph record albums of music that was culturally sophisticated yet broadly popular appeared under the Reader's Digest banner.

Foreign-language editions of Reader's Digest carried advertising from their inception, but in the United States advertising was not introduced until 1955. Furthermore, the magazine did not accept advertising for alcoholic beverages until the late 1970s, and it never ran advertisements for cigarettes. Instead, it began warning readers of the dangers of smoking, well before the surgeon general made his report in 1964.

Reader's Digest owed its initial appeal and continued success to DeWitt's ability to choose articles that reflected the values of its many readers. Many of those readers later told of the hope and inspiration they drew from the optimistic spirit that pervaded Reader's Digest. That spirit reflected the outlook of DeWitt Wallace, who based the magazine's content on what he wanted to read. Even as the publication grew in size and popularity, he retained strict editorial control.

When the magazine became successful, DeWitt Wallace kept up the task of editing it and managing finances. His wife designed the corporate headquarters and purchased many artworks that are still part of the company's collection. She also had a hand in selecting the graphics that adorned the back cover of the Digest. In 1956, she formed the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund to support the arts and make them accessible to persons of all income levels. A DeWitt Wallace Reader's Digest Fund was also formed for the purpose of providing education programs for young people.

In 1973, after over half a century of work, the Wallaces retired, although DeWitt Wallace kept in close contact with the editorial and corporate offices. He died on March 30, 1981, at the age of 91. Lila Wallace survived him by three years. The Wallaces never had children, and therefore most of their stock in the company was willed to charities, including Macalester College. This stock was non-voting, however, and almost all of the Wallace's voting power was placed with the two Wallace trust funds, of which the association management owned 3 percent.

About the time of Lila Wallace's death in 1984, George Grune became head of The Reader's Digest Association. The company was not performing very well, and in a successful effort to improve profitability, he took the company public and began a cost-cutting program that included the termination of foreign editions of Reader's Digest that were losing money, the divestiture of weak divisions, and the reduction of the workforce from 10,000 to 7,500. He also decreased the rate at which advertising was being lost.

Members of the staff who had worked during the Wallace years became concerned that Grune's methods departed from Wallace's idea that the company was an association of readers and not just a for-profit venture. There was no doubt that Grune had improved profits; in five years profits increased sevenfold. After years of higher profits, several of the charities that owned non-voting shares of the association's stock sold some of their shares to the public in order to take advantage of the high price the stock would bring. After the sale, in February 1990, 21 percent of the total stock was publicly held, these all being class A non-voting shares. Nearly all of the class B voting shares (98 percent) were still held by the trust funds, with the remainder held by employees of the association.

As the 1980s drew to a close, The Reader's Digest Association remained a global company, with operations located in 50 cities throughout the world. Reader's Digest continued as its premiere publication, accounting for nearly a third of the company's revenues. The Digest also served to introduce subscribers to other products sold by the company, such as the condensed books and audio or video tapes.

To maintain its subscribers' loyalties, editors of Reader's Digest kept coverage diverse and of high quality. The publication was earning nearly 70 percent of its revenues from circulation, which was a very high figure given that most magazines rely more heavily on advertising for revenue. But because the Digest did not rely so much on its advertisers, its content did not have to be targeted to a market desired by the advertisers, leaving editors free to select articles having the broadest appeal.

In the late 1980s, the association acquired several special-interest magazines, such as Travel Holiday, The Family Handyman, New Choices for the Best Years, and American Health. In 1990, it expanded this line by purchasing the British magazine Money, which was renamed Moneywise, and by starting up a French magazine, Budgets Famille. The special-interest-magazine line, along with other Reader's Digest books and home entertainment, accounted for the revenues not brought in by the Reader's Digest magazine. The company's books were either released individually or in series. Series books included such new product lines in the United States as the AMA Home Medical Library, while general individual books included reference books, how-to books, cookbooks, travel guides, and others.

As the global economy was restructured in the 1990s, The Reader's Digest Association made attempts to keep pace. Its products were already well known in 11 of the 12 countries that made up the European single market, although Budgets Famille was suspended in May 1990 after six issues because it did not meet circulation or advertising objectives. The company began formulating plans to expand into the new markets of Eastern Europe that were beginning to be important in world trade. For example, when the Berlin Wall was opened in 1989, employees of the Digest started distributing complimentary copies of the German-language version of Reader's Digest and collecting names for a mailing list of potential subscribers. Then in late 1991, Reader's Digest became available in Russian- and Hungarian-language editions to serve readers in those countries. In this way, the association continued to keep pace with an ever-changing world.

In 1991 the company boasted record sales figures, despite the fact that it was operating in a weak economic climate due to worldwide uncertainty caused by the Persian Gulf War. Aiding the Association in its success were two acquisitions made that year. Both David & Charles, a British book publisher and one of the United Kingdom's leading book clubs, and Joshua Morris Publishing, Inc., an international book publisher with a focus on children's materials, contributed to the Reader's Digest Association's strong financial standing in the early 1990s.

In 1992, as Reader's Digest celebrated its 70th anniversary, the company updated the strategic plan that had been set in place when Grune first took over in 1984. Even greater emphasis was placed on expanding into new markets around the globe, with use of the Reader's Digest magazine as an entry tool. The company committed to the idea of releasing at least one new edition of the magazine in each of the following years. Also emphasized in the newly updated plan were cost control measures which led to a 10 percent workforce reduction at the company's headquarters in Pleasantville in 1993. The structure of the company itself was also reorganized into three main operating divisions: Reader's Digest Europe, Reader's Digest U.S.A., and Reader's Digest Pacific, each of which became responsible for the business in its own market area.

The corporation's rejuvenation efforts soon began to show evidence of success. In 1993, after 55 years in the United Kingdom, that edition of Reader's Digest became the area's bestselling and most widely read magazine. That same year, Fortune magazine called the Reader's Digest Association the United States' most admired publishing company. In the United States, the ABC television network aired a special program entitled "Reader's Digest: On Television," which helped the company's books and home entertainment segment begin to flourish once again, after a slump during the previous few years. Furthermore, in a move designed to coincide with the world's progression into the information age, Reader's Digest began to pursue the development of interactive CD-ROM products.

By 1995, James P. Schadt had succeeded Grune as chairman and CEO of the Reader's Digest Association. Schadt, who moved up from the rank of president upon Grune's retirement to fill the new leadership role, had been with the company throughout its restructuring phase. His position as president was filled by Ken Gordon, a longtime Reader's Digest employee and the head of the U.S.A. operating division. Together, the two continued to focus both on strengthening Reader's Digest's business in the United States, and expanding throughout the world.

The year 1995 also offered unique opportunities for Reader's Digest to participate in cooperative endeavors with other companies. Reader's Digest teamed up with the Meredith Corporation, known widely for its Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies' Home Journal products, as a means of expanding its consumer database. The company also entered into partnerships with Microsoft, to produce CD-ROMs based on Reader's Digest reference books, and with Dove Audio to produce audio books.

Other operations of the association contributed to the company's total revenue. These operations included a subsidiary, QSP, Inc., which provided fundraising services for schools and youth groups through the sale of subscriptions to magazines, music products, and candy. Nearing the end of the century, Reader's Digest remained the world's best-selling and most widely read magazine. Despite the magazine's popularity, however, it was the books and home-entertainment division that generated the bulk of the association's profits by the late 1990s. Furthermore, with the increasing popularity of the Internet, an entirely new avenue of product development and distribution was opening up for Reader's Digest.

New leadership arrived at Reader's Digest as it entered the late 1990s, and the assessment of the association's condition was bleak. In April 1998, Thomas O. Ryder, who was recruited from American Express, was appointed chairman and chief executive officer, ushering in an era of sweeping change at the nearly 70-year-old company. Ryder discovered an organization suffering from bloated overhead, dwindling profits, weak product offerings, poor pricing decisions, and a litany of other ills that prompted him almost immediately to launch a program for recovery that would stretch into the 21st century. Ryder's cost-cutting measures began in July 1998, aimed at trimming between $300 million and $350 million in expenses by 2001. His measures substantially increased operating profits, but in January 2001, as Ryder wrote in the association's 2004 annual report, "suddenly everything went wrong." When the dot.com industry collapsed, Reader's Digest incurred heavy loses because it had invested sizeable sums in Internet-related businesses. Ryder also blamed the effects of 9/11 and the anthrax scare for inflicting damage on the association, but the most devastating development of the year came after regulatory agreements forced Reader's Digest to abandon its sweepstakes promotion business. In 2001, 32 states fined the association for misleading consumers with sweepstakes promotions. Subsequently, the use of sweepstakes marketing was eliminated from all U.S. editions of Reader's Digest.

On a more positive note, the years of restructuring also saw Reader's Digest complete several important acquisitions. In 1999, the company acquired Books Are Fun, Ltd. for $380 million. A profitable and fast-growing company, Books Are Fun operated traveling book fairs in office buildings and schools. In 2002, the company completed the largest acquisition in its history, paying $760 million for Greendale, Wisconsin-based Reiman Publications. A publisher of cooking, gardening, country lifestyle, and nostalgia magazines and books, Reiman was expected to add $300 million in annual revenue to Reader's Digest's total volume. Reiman published 12 bimonthly magazines with an aggregate circulation of 16 million subscribers. The company also maintained a 32-million-customer database, 19 million of whom were not in Reader's Digest's database.

As Reader's Digest entered the mid-2000s, Ryder continued his restructuring efforts, endeavoring to create a company that could look forward to a profitable future. Much work needed to be done, but there were signs of improvement, including a $10 million increase in operating profits by the company's North American operations in 2004. Another encouraging sign was the expansion of the company's non-core business, a goal of Ryder's when he took over and the motivation for the acquisition of Books Are Fun and Reiman. In 1998, Reader's Digest derived 8 percent of its revenue from its non-core operations. In 2004, the company derived 35 percent of its revenue from its non-core businesses. In the years ahead, the success of the company depended heavily on the effectiveness of Ryder's measures, making his tenure of management arguably as important as the legacy of the Wallaces.

Principal Subsidiaries

Reader's Digest Argentina, SRL; The Reader's Digest Association Pty. Limited (Australia); Verlag Das Beste Ges.m.b.H. (Austria); Reader's Digest N.V.-S.A. (Belgium); Reader's Digest Brasil Ltda. (Brazil); The Reader's Digest Association (Canada) Ltd.; Guangdong Pegasus Marketing Information & Service Co. Ltd. (China); Reader's Digest Vyber s.r.o. (Czech Republic); Oy Valitut Palat-Reader's Digest Ab (Finland); Selection du Reader's Digest S.A. (France); Verlag Das Beste GmbH (Germany); Reader's Digest Asia, Ltd. (Hong Kong); Reader's Digest Kiado KFT (Hungary); Libri e Piu, Srl (Italy); The Reader's Digest Ltd. (Japan); Reader's Digest (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd; Caribe Condor S.A. de C.V. (Mexico); Reader's Digest European Shared Services B.V. (Netherlands); Det Beste A/S (Norway); Reader's Digest (Philippines) Inc.; Reader's Digest Przeglad Sp.z o.o. (Poland); Seleccoes do Reader's Digest (Portugal) S.A.; Editura Reader's Digest SRL (Romania); Publishing House Reader's Digest, JSC (Russia); Reader's Digest Vyber Slovensko, s.r.o. (Slovak Republic); Reader's Digest Selecciones S.A. (Spain); Reader's Digest Aktiebolag (Sweden); Das Beste aus Reader's Digest AG/Selection du Reader's Digest SA (Switzerland); Reader's Digest (Thailand) Limited; LLC Direct Digest (Ukraine); Reader's Digest Europe Limited (U.K.); Ardee Music Publishing, Inc.; Books Are Fun, Ltd.; Christmas Angel Productions, Inc.; Pegasus Asia Investments Inc.; Pegasus Finance Corp; Pegasus Investment, Inc; Pegasus Sales, Inc.; Pleasantville Music Publishing, Inc.; QSP, Inc.; R.D. Manufacturing Corporation; RD Publications, Inc.; Reader's Digest Children's Publishing, Inc.; Reader's Digest Consumer Services, Inc.; Reader's Digest Entertainment, Inc.; Reader's Digest Financial Services, Inc.; Reader's Digest Latinoamerica, S.A.; Reader's Digest Sales and Services, Inc.; Reader's Digest Sub Nine, Inc.; Reader's Digest Young Families, Inc.; SMDDMS, Inc.

Principal Competitors

Bertelsmann AG; Rodale, Inc.; Time Inc.

Further Reading

Ferguson, Charles W., "Unforgettable DeWitt Wallace," Reader's Digest, February 1987.

Granatstein, Lisa, "Digesting Change," MEDIAWEEK, June 17, 2002, p. 42.

------, "Digesting RDA's Changes," MEDIAWEEK, April 29, 2002, p. 5.

Harrington, John, "StockWatch: World of Woe at Reader's Digest," Crain's New York Business, August 27, 2001, p. 30.

Lynn, Matthew, "Revolution in Pleasantville," Management Today, April 1996, p. 62.

Milliot, Jim, "International Unit Leads Reader's Digest," Publishers Weekly, February 7, 2005, p. 10.

------, "More Jobs Go As Reader's Digest Restructures Again," Publishers Weekly, August 4, 2003, p. 11.

------, "More Restructuring at RD," Publishers Weekly, March 10, 2003, p. 17.

------, "Publishers Discuss Finances, The Future at Conference," Publishers Weekly, December 20, 1993, p. 10.

------, "RD Focuses on Expansion," Publishers Weekly, November 8, 2004, p. 10.

------, "Reader's Digest 'On Track,'" Publishers Weekly, February 2, 2004, p. 16.

------, "Reader's Digest to Acquire Reiman Publications," Publishers Weekly, April 1, 2002, p. 9.

------, "Trade Unit Sales Jump at Reader's Digest," Publishers Weekly, May 10, 2004, p. 7.

Morais, Richard C., "Hate Selling," Forbes, June 5, 1995, p. 142.

------, "Takeover Bait," Forbes Global, July 7, 2003, p. 26.

"New Castle," Westchester County Business Journal, February 28, 2005, p. 36.

Pogrebin, Robin, "A Magazine Only a Mother Could Love? Seeking Younger Audience, Reader's Digest Tries to Lose Its Stodgy Image," New York Times, July 22, 1996, p. C1.

Rothman, Andrea, "The Man Who Rewrote Reader's Digest," Business Week, June 4, 1990.

"Ryder Probes RDA's Past Problems," Direct Marketing, August 2000, p. 9.

"With the Sale of Its 65-Year-Old Headquarters, 'Reader's Digest' Is Becoming a 'Pleasantville' Tenant," America's Intelligence Wire, December 6, 2004, p. 31.

— Donald R. Stabile

Reader'S Digest, founded in 1922 by husband and wife Dewitt Wallace and Lila Bell Acheson with the mission of providing selections of published articles and books to help readers cope with the flood of news and information. The Digest drastically "condensed" articles, often cutting by 75 percent before reprinting them.

The Digest conceived of reading material as information, not literature. One popular though widely criticized innovation was its publication of condensed fiction. Novels lost their subplots in the abridgement process. Publishers initially feared losing book buyers to Digest publication, but found that appearance in the Reader's Digest actually boosted sales.

Wallace refused advertising until 1955. Soliciting ads would entail revealing circulation figures, and revealing them could raise the prices the Digest paid for reprinting.

Production costs were likewise kept low, and the magazine seemed a bargain, containing large quantities of articles shortened from the periodical press, printed in a handy size. Eventually, the Digest developed its own original articles, maintaining the illusion that these were reprints by first subsidizing their publication elsewhere. This strategy allowed it to promote its conservative views in other magazines. Its conservative crusades included an attack on Alfred Kinsey's 1948 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, and it firmly supported U.S. government policy during the Vietnam War.

Although the Digest's circulation dropped far below its high of 18 million, in 2000 it still had over 12.5 million subscribers, the third largest circulation of an American magazine. Editions in nineteen languages generated an enormous international circulation as well.

Bibliography

Sharp, Joanne. Condensing the Cold War: Reader's Digest and American Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.

Tebbel, John, and Mary Ellen Zuckerman. The Magazine in America 1741–1990. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Quotes:

"A friend hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails."

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (October 2010)

Reader's Digest

May 2011 cover of Reader's Digest
Editor-in-chief	Liz Vaccariello
Total circulation (2011)	5,653,440[1]
Founder	DeWitt and Lila Bell Wallace
First issue	1922 (1922)
Company	The Reader's Digest Association
Country	United States
Based in	New York, New York
Website	www.rd.com
ISSN	0034-0375

Reader's Digest is a postal lottery company and general interest family magazine, published ten times annually. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, its headquarters is now in New York City. It was founded in 1922, by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace. For many years, Reader's Digest was the best-selling consumer magazine in the United States, losing the distinction in 2009 to Better Homes and Gardens. According to Mediamark Research, it reaches more readers with household incomes of $100,000+ than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Inc. combined.^[2]

Global editions of Reader's Digest reach an additional 40 million people in more than 70 countries, with 50 editions in 21 languages. It has a global circulation of 17 million, making it the largest paid circulation magazine in the world. It is also published in Braille, digital, audio, and a version in large type called Reader's Digest Large Print. The magazine is compact, with its pages roughly half the size of most American magazines'. Hence, in the summer of 2005, the U.S. edition adopted the slogan, "America in your pocket." In January 2008, it was changed to "Life well shared."

Contents 1 History 1.1 Inception and growth 1.1.1 Business organization and ownership 1.2 Sweepstakes agreement 2 Direct marketing 3 Criticism 4 International editions 4.1 Arabic editions 4.2 Canadian edition 4.3 Indian edition 5 Books 6 Editors 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 External links

History

This section requires expansion with: Early years.

Inception and growth

Logo used from about 1963 until 2007 (January 2008 issue)

The magazine was started by DeWitt Wallace, while recovering from shrapnel wounds received in World War I. Wallace had the idea to gather a sampling of favorite articles on many subjects from various monthly magazines, sometimes condensing and rewriting them, and to combine them into one magazine.^[3] Since its inception, Reader's Digest has maintained a conservative^[4] and anti-communist perspective on political and social issues.^[5] The Wallaces initially hoped the journal could provide $5,000 of net income. Mr. Wallace’s continuing correct assessment of what the potential mass-market audience wanted to read led to rapid growth. By 1929, the magazine had 290,000 subscribers and had a gross income of $900,000 a year. The first international edition was published in the United Kingdom in 1938 and was sold at 2 shillings. By the 40th anniversary of Reader’s Digest, there were 40 international editions, in 13 languages and Braille, and it was the largest-circulating journal in Canada, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Peru and other countries, with a total international circulation of 23 million.^[3]

The first "Word Power" column of the magazine was published in the January 1945 edition.^[6] The author's name, Wilfred J. Funk, was disclosed in the February 1945 issue.^[7] In December 1952 the magazine published "Cancer by the Carton", a series of articles that linked smoking with lung cancer.^[8] This first brought the dangers of smoking to public attention which, up to then, had ignored the health threats.

From 2002 through 2006, Reader's Digest conducted a vocabulary competition in schools throughout the United States called Reader's Digest National Word Power Challenge (NWPC). In 2007, the magazine said it had decided not to have the competition for the 2007–2008 school year, "but rather to use the time to evaluate the program in every respect, including scope, mission, and model for implementation."^[9]

In 2006, the magazine published three more local-language editions in Slovenia, Croatia and Romania. In October 2007, the Digest expanded in Serbia. The magazine's licensee in Italy stopped publishing in December 2007. The magazine launched in The People's Republic of China in 2008.

For 2010, the U.S. edition of the magazine planned to decrease its circulation to 5.5 million, from 8 million, to publish 10 times a year rather than 12, and to increase digital offerings. It also planned to reduce its number of celebrity profiles and how-to features, and increase the number of inspiring spiritual stories and stories about the military.^[10] The regular features include the cartoon series Reynolds Unwrapped by Dan Reynolds.

Business organization and ownership

The magazine's parent company, The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (RDA), became a publicly traded corporation in 1990. As of 2010^[update] RDA has reported a net loss each year since 2005^{[citation needed]}. In March 2007, Ripplewood Holdings LLC led a consortium of private equity investors who bought the company through a leveraged buy-out for US$2.8 billion, financed primarily by the issuance of US$2.2 billion of debt.^[3][3][10] Ripplewood invested $275 million of its own money, and had partners including Rothschild Bank of Zurich and GoldenTree Asset Management of New York. The private equity deal tripled the association's interest payments, to $148 million a year.^[3]

On 24 August 2009 RDA announced it had filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy court a pre-arranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in order to continue operations, and to restructure the $2.2 billion debt undertaken by the leveraged buy-out transaction.^[3][11][12] The company emerged from bankruptcy with the lenders exchanging debt for equity, and Ripplewood's entire equity investment was extinguished.^[3]

In April 2010, the UK arm was sold to its management. It has a licensing deal with the US company to continue publishing the UK edition.^[13]

In the US the company cut the number of issues it published a year from 12 to 10 last year. It also cut its circulation guarantee for advertisers to 5.5 million copies from 8 million.

Sweepstakes agreement

In 2001, 32 states attorneys general reached agreements with the company and other sweepstakes operators to settle allegations that they tricked the elderly into buying products because they were a "guaranteed winner" of a lottery. The settlement required the companies to expand the type size of notices in the packaging that no purchase is necessary to play the sweepstakes, and to:

1. Establish a "Do Not Contact List" and refrain from soliciting any future "high-activity" customers unless and until Reader's Digest actually makes contact with that customer and determines that the customer is not buying because he or she thinks that the purchase will improve his or her chances of winning.
2. Send letters to individuals who spend more than $1,000 in a six-month period telling them that they are not required to make purchases to win the sweepstakes, that making a purchase will not improve their chances of winning and that, in fact, all entries have the same chance to win whether or not the entry is accompanied by a purchase.^[14][15][16]

The agreement appeared to adversely affect Reader's Digest circulation in the U.S.^{[clarification needed]} Its 1970s peak circulation was 17 million U.S. subscribers.^[3]

Direct marketing

RDA offers many mail-order products included with "sweepstakes" or contests. U.S. Reader's Digest and the company's other U.S. magazines do not use sweepstakes in their direct mail promotions.

Criticism

Reader's Digest in the UK has been criticised by the Trading Standards Institute for preying on the elderly and vulnerable with misleading bulk mailings that claim the recipient is guaranteed a large cash prize and advising them not to discuss this with anyone else. Following their complaint, an investigation was launched by the Advertising Standards Authority.^[17] The ASA investigation upheld the complaint, ruling that the Reader's Digest mailing was irresponsible, misleading (particularly for the elderly) and had breached three clauses of the Committee of Advertising Practice code.^[18] Reader's Digest was told not to use this mailing again.

International editions

Although Reader's Digest was founded in the U.S., its international editions have made it the best-selling monthly magazine in the world. The magazine's worldwide circulation including all editions has reached 17 million copies and 70 million readers.

Reader's Digest is currently published in 52 editions and 35 languages and is available in over 100 countries, including Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, and the People's Republic of China in 2008.

Its international editions account for about 50% of the magazine's trade volume. In each market, local editors commission or purchase articles for their own market and share content with US and other editions. The selected articles are then translated by local translators and the translations edited by the local editors to make them match the "well-educated informal" style of the American edition.

Over the 87 years, the company has published editions in various languages in different countries, or for different regions.

Usually these editions started out as translations of the US version of the magazine, but over time many non-US editions became unique, providing local material more germane to local readers. Local editions that still publish the bulk of the American Reader's Digest are usually titled with a qualifier, such as the Portuguese edition, Seleções do Reader's Digest (Selections from Reader's Digest), or the Swedish edition, Reader's Digest Det Bästa (The Best of Reader's Digest).

The list is sorted by year of first publication.^[19] Some countries had editions but no longer do; for example, the Danish version of Reader's Digest (Det Bedste) ceased publication in 2005 and was replaced by the Swedish version (Reader's Digest Det Bästa); as a result the Swedish edition covers stories about both countries (but written solely in Swedish). The Italian version (Selezione) ran for 60 years until it was shut down in 2007, and the Japanese edition ran from September 1946 until February 1986.

• 1938 - United Kingdom (sold in 2010, operated under licence)
• 1940 - Latin America (in Spanish)
• 1942 - Brazil
• 1943 - Sweden
• 1943 - Egypt (Arabic) (Al-Mukhtar)
• 1945 - Finland
• 1946 - Australia, Denmark (until 2005), Japan (until 1986)
• 1947 - Belgium (French), France, Norway
• 1948 - Canada (in English and French), Germany, Italy (until 2007), South Africa, Switzerland (in French and German)
• 1950 - Argentina, New Zealand
• 1952 - Austria, Spain
• 1954 - India (in English)
• 1957 - Netherlands
• 1965 - Hong Kong (in English), Southeast Asia (in Traditional Chinese)
• 1968 - Belgium (Dutch)
• 1971 - Spanish speakers in the United States (in Spanish), Portugal
• 1978 - South Korea
• 1991 - Hungary, Russia
• 1993 - Czech Republic
• 1995 - Poland
• 1996 - Thailand
• 1997 - Slovakia
• 2004 - Indonesia
• 2005 - Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria
• 2007 - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Ukraine
• 2008 - People's Republic of China

Arabic editions

The first Reader's Digest publication in the Arab World was printed in Egypt in September 1943.^[20] The license was eventually terminated.

The second effort and the first Reader's Digest franchise agreement was negotiated through the efforts of Frederick Pittera, in 1976, an American entrepreneur, who sold the idea to Lebanon's former Foreign Minister, Dr. Lucien Dahdah, then son-in-law of Suleiman Frangieh, President of Lebanon. Dahdah partnered with Ghassan Al Tueni, (former Lebanon Ambassador to the United Nations, and publisher of Al Nahar newspaper, Beirut), in publishing Reader's Digest in the Arabic language. It was printed in Cairo for distribution throughout the Arab world under title Al- Mukhtar. In format, Al-Mukhtar was the same as the U.S. edition with 75% of the editorial content. Dr. Philip Hitti, Chairman of Princeton University's Department of Oriental Languages and a team of Arabic advisers counseled on what would be of interest to Arabic readers. The publication of Al-Mukhtar was terminated by Reader's Digest in April 1993.

Canadian edition

The Canadian edition first appeared in February 1948, and today the vast majority of it is Canadian content. All major articles in the August 2005 edition and most of the minor articles were selected from locally-produced articles that matched the Digest style. There is usually at least one major American article in most issues.

"Life's Like That" is the Canadian name of "Life in These United States." All other titles are taken from the American publication. Recent "That's Outrageous" articles have been using editorials from the Calgary Sun.

Under new management—the new editor is Robert Goyette—the Canadian edition continues to publish.

Indian edition

The Indian edition was first published in 1954. Its circulation then was 40,000 copies. Today, the magazine is published in India by Living Media India Ltd., and sold over 600,000 copies monthly in 2008. It prints Indian and international articles.^[21]

The Indian Reader's Digest was published for many years by the Tata Group of companies.^[21] Reader's Digest first entered India in 1954. It is currently published by the Living Media Group.^[21] According to the Indian Readership Survey Round II of 2009, the readership for Reader's Digest is 3.94 million, second only to India Today at 5.62 million.^[21]

The Indian edition is published by the India Today Group under licence. Editorial control rests with the global editor-in-chief of Reader's Digest, as with all global Digest editions; the Chief Executive Officer is Ashish Bagga. The India Editor is Mohan Sivanand.^[22]

Books

Reader's Digest publishes bi-monthly a series of softcover anthology books called Reader's Digest Select Editions (previously known as Reader's Digest Condensed Books). During the 1970s, there was also a Reader's Digest Press which published full-length, original works of non-fiction.

Editors

1. Lila Bell Wallace and DeWitt Wallace (1922–1964)
2. Hobart D. Lewis (1964–1976)
3. Edward T. Thompson (1976–1984)
4. Kenneth O. Gilmore (1984–1990)
5. Kenneth Tomlinson (1990–1996)
6. Christopher Willcox (1996–2000)
7. Eric Schrier (2000–2001)
8. Jacqueline Leo (2001–2007)
9. Peggy Northrop (2007–2011)
10. Liz Vaccariello (2011-present)

See also

• World's Best Reading
• List of United States magazines

Notes

1. ^ "eCirc for Consumer Magazines". Audit Bureau of Circulations. June 30, 2011. http://abcas3.accessabc.com/ecirc/magtitlesearch.asp. Retrieved October 18, 2011. 
2. ^ Doran, James (2006-11-17). "Reader's Digest sold to private equity firm for $2.4bn". Times Online (London). http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article639494.ece. Retrieved 24 October 2008. 
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} Segal, David (December 20, 2009). "A Reader’s Digest That Grandma Never Dreamed Of". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/business/media/20digest.html. Retrieved December 20, 2009. 
4. ^ McGuire, Patrick A. (August 25, 1993). "Doing the Right thing Reader's Digest's lasting appeal: Condensed and conservative". [The Baltimore Sun]. Archived from the original on November 24, 2010. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-08-25/features/1993237139_1_reader-digest-successful-magazine-100-million-readers. Retrieved January 9, 2011. "Still, says Mr. Heidenry, the Digest has a blind side. 'It persists in a right wing ideology,' he says, 'and they don't print two sides to a question.'" 
5. ^ Condensing the Cold War : Reader’s Digest and American Identity by Joanne P. Sharp. University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
6. ^ pages 29 and 103
7. ^ Don R. Vaughan, Ph.D., vocabulary columnist
8. ^ "CNN Interactive". Cnn.com. http://www.cnn.com/US/9705/tobacco/history/. Retrieved 2009-06-22. 
9. ^ "Reader's Digest National Word Power Challenge Program Announcement". Reader's Digest. http://www.rd.com/nwpc/. Retrieved 2009-06-19. 
10. ^ ^{a b} Stephanie Clifford (June 18, 2009). "Reader’s Digest Searches for a Contemporary Niche". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/business/media/19readers.html?_r=1. 
11. ^ Reader's Digest Association - News & Releases
12. ^ "Reader's Digest Plans Chapter 11 Filing". The New York Times. 2009-08-17. http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/readers-digest-plans-chapter-11-filing/?hpw. Retrieved 2010-05-22. 
13. ^ Moore Stephens sells Reader's Digest to Jon Moulton business, Accountancy Age, 12 April 2010
14. ^ "Reader's Digest Enters Into Multi-state Sweepstakes Agreement Agrees to Pay $6 Million in Consumer Restitution". Nj.gov. http://www.nj.gov/oag/ca/press/digest.htm. Retrieved 2009-06-22. 
15. ^ "News & Alerts - California Dept. of Justice - Office of the Attorney General". Ag.ca.gov. 2001-03-08. http://www.ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=1074&year=2001&month=3. Retrieved 2009-06-22. 
16. ^ Schultz, Ray (2001-03-08). "Reader's Digest Agrees to Sweeps Restrictions". Directmag.com. http://directmag.com/news/marketing_readers_digest_agrees/. Retrieved 2009-06-22. 
17. ^ "BBC article about misleading advertising investigation". BBC News. 2008-06-07. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7441437.stm. Retrieved 2010-09-14. 
18. ^ "UK Advertising Standards Agency adjudication on misleading marketing". 2008-06-07. http://www.asa.org.uk/Complaints-and-ASA-action/Adjudications/2008/9/The-Readers-Digest-Association-Ltd/TF_ADJ_44924.aspx. Retrieved 2010-09-14. 
19. ^ "Reader's Digest Timeline". Phx.corporate-ir.net. 2007-03-03. http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=71092&p=irol-rdatimeline. Retrieved 2009-06-22. 
20. ^ http://www.nagam.org/showthread.php?t=3159 An Arabic Article about the history of the Arabic version
21. ^ ^{a b c d} Indian version of Reader's Digest
22. ^ Staff details, Indian version

References

• John Bainbridge, Little Wonder. Or, the Reader's Digest and How It Grew, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1945.
• John Heidenry, Theirs Was the Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the Story of the Reader's Digest, New York/London: W.W. Norton, 1993
• Samuel A. Schreiner, The Condensed World of the Reader's Digest, New York: Stein and Day, 1977.
• James Playsted Wood, 1958: Of Lasting Interest: The Story of the Reader's Digest, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1958.
• Clem Robyns, "The Internationalisation of Social and Cultural Values: On the Homogenization and Localization Strategies of the Reader's Digest", Folia Translatologica 3, 1994, 83-92
• Joanne P. Sharp, Condensing the Cold War: Reader's Digest and American Identity, University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
• Joanne P. Sharp, Hegemony, popular culture and geopolitics: the Reader's Digest and the construction of danger, Political Geography, Elsevier, 1996.

External links

• Official website

v d e The Reader's Digest Association Reader's Digest Community Reader's Digest (Select Editions) Food & Entertaining Allrecipes.com  • Taste of Home (Healthy Cooking • Simple and Delicious) • World Wide Country Tours Home & Garden Birds & Blooms • Country • Country Woman • The Family Handyman • Farm & Ranch Living • freshHOME • Reminisce International Best Health • Our Canada Lifestyle & Entertainment Direct Direct Entertainment Media Group • Saguaro Road Records • Time–Life Other Units Weekly Reader

v d e 50 largest magazines in the United States First half, 2011 AAA Going Places AAA Living AARP Bulletin AARP The Magazine American Rifleman Better Homes and Gardens Birds & Blooms Cooking Light Cosmopolitan Country Living Entertainment Weekly ESPN The Magazine Every Day with Rachael Ray Family Circle FamilyFun Game Informer Glamour Golf Digest Good Housekeeping Guideposts InStyle Ladies' Home Journal Martha Stewart Living Maxim Men's Health Money National Geographic O, The Oprah Magazine Parenting Parents People Prevention Reader's Digest Real Simple Redbook Self Seventeen Shape Smithsonian Southern Living Sports Illustrated Taste of Home The American Legion Magazine The Costco Connection Time TV Guide Us Weekly Via Woman's Day Women's Health

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