Page 302 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

A New Slant Made This Circulating Library a Success

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HEN J. J. and R. M. Sullivan, of Chicago, investigated the circulating library
business they discovered larger profits were in store for the library which
delivered its books regularly to readers, rather than waited for readers to drop
in for books when they felt inclined. Making no provision for drop-in
business they rented room space only in an office building on the north side
of town, and stocked a few volumes of standard authors. With a dozen of
these volumes in a shopping sack each began making the rounds of the large
office buildings on Michigan Avenue and in the central business district of
the city. Secretaries, stenographers and clerks were, for the most part, the
clientele at which they aimed. When a secretary on whom they called was not
interested in the standard author they offered, one of the Sullivan brothers
would inquire her taste in books and ask what book she would like him to
bring her the following week.

Making up their lists in this way from the preferences and requests of the
office people on whom they called, they eventually built up a library of
several thousand volumes and a clientele of twenty-eight hundred customers.
The charge for membership in this perambulating library was one dollar and
the rental fifty cents per week on books costing three dollars and over, thirty-
five cents on books from two dollars and a half to three dollars, and twenty-
five cents per week on books under two dollars and a half. The Sullivan
brothers each had regular days for calling on specified buildings, and they
made the rounds of their entire clientele once a week.

In order not to overload themselves unnecessarily with books in their daily
rounds, each night preceding their morning call, they went over the file cards
of the clients on whom they would call the following day, noting the books
they had already read and making a selection from their new stock which
would suit their customers’ tastes. If, for instance, a client had started to read
Jalna or The Whiteoaks of Jalna, he was sure to want Finch’s Fortune next
and then The Master of Jalna, also by the same author. A client who liked
Hugh Walpole would be glad to get Vanessa; and a client who liked William