Reader’s Digest Logo — Reader’s Digest is a magazine based U.S. monthly New York, founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace . Owned by The Reader’s Digest Association until March 2007, when it was wholly acquired by Ripplewood Holdings of $ 2.400.000.000. In paperback, illustrated, publishes original articles abstracted or reprinted from other journals, books, collections of jokes, anecdotes, quotes and other short writings. It is published in thirty-five languages and has a circulation of about 30,000,000 copies. In December 1940 the first edition in Spanish called Selections.
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In the basement of a house located at the corner of Macdougal Street and Minetta Lane, in the heart of Greenwich Village New York (now converted into a restaurant), began the history of Reader’s Digest. It was there that in 1922 the marriage Wallace, De Witt and Lila, began the story of her ‘American dream’, sending 5,000 letters to friends, acquaintances and others requesting $ 3 for an annual subscription to a magazine novel: pocket format, with 30 items (one for each day of the month) of interest, selected from other magazines, but “condensed”, ie, abbreviated without losing the sense of them.
This project was conceived by De Witt after being wounded in the battle of Verdun (in the First World War), during his long recovery in hospital, which lasted more than two months. Upon returning from Europe, he worked on the idea and sent the project to more than ten major U.S. publishers. Nobody saw commercial interest, unless the tycoon Randolph Hearst, who nevertheless considered neither viable.
Of the 5,000 persons contacted, 1,500 accepted the proposal, and with an initial capital of $ 4,500, began the Reader’s Digest, which now has fifty-two separate editions in thirty-five languages and over one hundred million readers worldwide, one of the most important publishing events worldwide. However, from mid 2000, has experienced some decline with the growing popularity of Internet, entertainment magazines and blogs, getting to close its offices in Italy and Denmark and to sell its British section, while maintaining the license.
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