MARTIN M. FOSS

jt

VICE PRESIDENT

VICE PRESIDENT AND TREASURER

SECRETARY. & ASST. TREASURER

JAM > RAW, JR. es ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENTS
ee eee McGRAw-HILL BOoK COMPANY: INC.
CURTIS G.BENJAMIN
Mc GRAW-HILL BUILDING COLLEGE DEPARTMENT
_EGNER
JAMES S. THOMPSON 330 WEST 42n0 STREET ae eae DEPARTMENT
NEW YORK, N-Y. JOSEPH A.HYLAND
CURTIS Woes nae PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT
CABLE ADDRESS LONDON
WILLIAM E. HAWKE “Mc GRAW HILL” NEW YORK ALDWYCH HOUSE,W.C.2. BUS 8 Ser cir
May 5th

Dr. Forrest C. Allen

Director of Physical Education
University of Kansas

Lawrence, Kansas

Dear Dr. Allen:

I hardly know how to answer your letter
of April 27, for after so many letters on my part
concerning the sales record of BETTER BASKETBALL,
you still overlook them and also have the feeling
that sales should have been better. You also
intimate that the so-called scarcity of sales is
due to lack of promotion.

I am not going back again and enumerate
all the various amounts of promotion that the book
has already had. May I say that it has had much
more than the average of our books and we still
feel the record of sales of 3,554 copies to May 1,
in a little more than a year, is very satisfactory.

In your feeling you are not taking into
account the difference in times between now and
fifteen years ago. You are also not taking into
account all the competition of other basketball
pooks which are on the market now and were not on
the market when your BASKETBALL BIBLE was published.
High priced book units do not sell as well today as
they did when the BASKETBALL BIBLE was published
and there are many other factors which you apparently
refuse to accept.

Hence, my reaction at the moment is that I
wish we had never published the book, for we do not
want unsatisfactory and disappointing relationships.
I honestly doubt whether you alone or any other
publisher could have made as good a record, and I
doubt whether the amount of money on promotion would
have been spent.