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Published on August 7, 2007

Publishers called it blasphemy. Were they trying to squeeze the life out of the industry, which by then, in 1935, was fending off the expansion of radio and advent of television, not to mention threats from movies?

Novelists, too, were scared their royalties would disappear.

"If you have, for instance, five shillings to spend, and the normal price of a book is half-a-crown, you are very likely to spend your whole five shillings on two books. But if books are sixpence each, you are not going to buy 10 of them, because you don't want as many as 10; your saturation will have been reached long before that.

Probably you will buy three sixpenny books and spend the rest of your five shillings on seats at the 'movies'," charged George Orwell, as quoted in Jeremy Lewis' biography, "Penguin Special: The Life and Times of Allen Lane".

Revolution does not come easy, as Orwell would know. And so entered Allen Lane and Penguin Book, bulldozing their way into the presidential palace.

Lane's quest to make good books accessible to the public wasn't in itself an original idea. Collins had tried it before, but with little success, for seven pence in 1934.

But it was Lane's early business acumen, so attuned to the spirit of the time, that has stood the test of time - before it went belly-up that is, just prior to Lane's death, and then acquired by Pearson Longman.

He introduced bold and Bauhaus-austere covers and begged many publishers to sublease their titles to him. Among the early editions were the likes of Agatha Christie's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" and Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms".

But it was an order from Woolworth, then a major discount retailer, that sparked a series of sold-out titles.

Penguin has weathered through much conflict with the Establishment, not least in the litigation over the content of DH Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover".

In his professional life, Lane was inclined to shock his conservative colleagues with his creativity. Not too long after Penguin was launched, he installed a "Penguincubator", essentially a slot-machine book dispenser, in Charing Cross Tube Station in

London.

Ever a shrewd marketer - well, "marketing" had not been concocted yet - he inserted business-reply cards in these slot-machine books, asking for readers' suggestions and, of course, their mailing addresses.

But the booksellers weren't too receptive about it then. So what?

Like the BBC and the British public-library system, Penguin has become an institution in itself.

This just proves the age-old business adage that persistence pays off in the end.

kinan@nationgroup.com