Inception and growth In 1920,
Dewitt Wallace married
Lila Bell Wallace in
Pleasantville, New York. Shortly thereafter, the two would launch ''Reader's Digest
in the basement below a Greenwich Village speakeasy. The idea for Reader's Digest'' was 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. and
anti-Communist perspective on political and social issues. The Wallaces initially hoped the journal could provide $5,000 of net income. Wallace's 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. By the 40th anniversary of ''Reader's Digest'', it had 40 international editions, in 13 languages and Braille, and at one point, it was the largest-circulating journal in
China,
Mexico,
Spain,
Sweden,
Peru, and other countries, with a total international circulation of 23 million. In December 1952, the magazine published "Cancer by the Carton", a series of articles that linked
smoking with
lung cancer. From 2002 to 2006, ''Reader's Digest
conducted a vocabulary competition in schools throughout the US called Reader's Digest'' National Word Power Challenge. In 2007, the magazine said it would not have the competition for the 2007–08 school year: "...but rather to use the time to evaluate the program in every respect, including scope, mission, and model for implementation." In 2006, the magazine published three more local-language editions in
Slovenia,
Croatia, and
Romania. In October 2007, the
Digest expanded into
Serbia. The magazine's licensee in
Italy stopped publishing in December 2007. The magazine launched in
the People's Republic of China in January 2008. It ceased publishing in China in 2012, due to a lack of sales caused by a relatively high price, a poorly defined audience and low-quality translated content. For 2010, the US edition of the magazine reduced its publishing schedule to 10 times a year rather than 12, and to increase digital offerings. It also cut its circulation guarantee for advertisers to 5.5 million copies from 8 million. In announcing that decision, in June 2009, the company said that it 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. Its current frequency of publication is 6 times a year.
Business organization and ownership By the 1950s the Reader's Digest executive leadership included the Editor, Executive Editor, Managing Editors, Book Department, General Business Manager and Director, International Editions. There were several levels of editorial staff including Seniors Editors, Department Editors, Roving Editors, and Associate Editors. In 1990, the magazine's parent company,
The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (RDA), became a publicly traded corporation. From 2005 through 2010, RDA reported a net loss each year. In March 2007,
Ripplewood Holdings LLC led a consortium of
private-equity investors who bought the company through a leveraged buyout for US$2.8 billion, financed primarily by the issuance of US$2.2 billion of debt. Ripplewood invested $275 million of its own money, and had partners including Rothschild Bank of Zürich and GoldenTree Asset Management of New York. The private-equity deal tripled the association's interest payments, to $148 million a year. The company emerged from bankruptcy with the lenders exchanging debt for equity, and Ripplewood's entire equity investment was extinguished. The closure of the UK edition was announced in April 2024. On February 17, 2013, RDA Holding filed for bankruptcy a second time. The company was purchased for £1 by Mike Luckwell, a venture capitalist and once the biggest shareholder in
WPP plc. ==Direct marketing==