Reader's Digest


Reader's Digest is an American general-interest family magazine, published six times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wife Lila Bell Wallace. For many years, Reader's Digest was the best-selling consumer magazine in the United States; it lost that distinction in 2009 to Better Homes and Gardens. According to Media Mark Research, Reader's Digest reached more readers with household incomes of over $100,000 than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Inc. combined.
Global editions of Reader's Digest reach an additional 40 million people in more than 70 countries, via 49 editions in 21 languages. The periodical has a global circulation of 10.5 million, making it the largest paid-circulation magazine in the world.
It is also published in Braille, digital, and audio editions, and in a large-type edition called "Reader's Digest Large Print". The magazine is compact—its pages are roughly half the size of most American magazines. In summer 2005, the company adopted the slogan "America in your pocket" for the U.S. edition. In January 2008, however, it changed the slogan to "Life well shared".

History

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.
In the 20th century, Reader's Digest maintained a conservative 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.
The magazine's format for several decades consisted of 30 articles per issue, along with an "It Pays to Increase your Word Power" vocabulary quiz, a page of "Amusing Anecdotes" and "Personal Glimpses", two features of funny stories entitled "Humor in Uniform" and "Life in these United States", and a lengthier article at the end, usually condensed from a published book. Other regular features were "My Most Unforgettable Character", the "Drama in Real Life" survival stories, and more recently "That's Outrageous". These were all listed in the table of contents on the front cover. Each article was prefaced by a small, simple line drawing. In more recent times, the format evolved into flashy, colorful, eye-catching graphics throughout, and many short bits of data interspersed with full articles. The table of contents is now contained inside. From 2003 to 2007, the back cover featured "Our America", paintings of Rockwell-style whimsical situations by artist C. F. Payne. Another monthly consumer advice feature is "What won't tell you," with a different profession featured each time.
The first "Word Power" column of the magazine was published in the January 1945 edition, written by Wilfred J. Funk. In December 1952, the magazine published "Cancer by the Carton", a series of articles that linked smoking with lung cancer, and this topic was later repeated in other articles.
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.
Beginning in January 2013, the US edition was increased to 12 times a year.
Its current frequency of publication is 6 times a year.

Business organization and ownership

In 1990, the magazine's parent company, The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 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.
On August 24, 2009, RDA announced it had filed with the US Bankruptcy court an arranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy to continue operations, and to restructure the US$2.2 billion debt undertaken by the leveraged buyout transaction. The company emerged from bankruptcy with the lenders exchanging debt for equity, and Ripplewood's entire equity investment was extinguished.
In April 2010, the UK arm was sold to its management. It has a licensing deal with the US company to continue publishing the UK edition. 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

RDA offers many mail-order products included with "sweepstakes" or contests. US Reader's Digest and the company's other US magazines do not use sweepstakes in their direct-mail promotions. A notable shift to electronic direct marketing has been undertaken by the company to adapt to shifting media landscape. In the mid-20th century, phonograph record albums of popular classical and easy-listening music, bearing the magazine's name, were sold by mail. Reader's Digest also partnered with RCA to offer a mail-order music club which offered discount pricing on vinyl records.

Sweepstakes agreement

In 2001, 32 states' attorneys general reached agreements with the company and other sweepstakes operators to settle allegations that they tricked the elderly into buying products because they were a "guaranteed winner" of a lottery. The settlement required the companies to expand the type size of notices in the packaging that no purchase is necessary to play the sweepstakes, and to:
  1. Establish a "Do Not Contact List" and refrain from soliciting any future "high-activity" customers unless and until Reader's Digest actually makes contact with that customer and determines that the customer is not buying because they believe that the purchase will improve their chances of winning.
  2. Send letters to individuals who spend more than $1,000 in a six-month period telling them that they are not required to make purchases to win the sweepstakes, that making a purchase will not improve their chances of winning, and that all entries have the same chance to win whether or not the entry is accompanied by a purchase.
The UK edition of Reader's Digest has also been criticized by the Trading Standards Institute for preying on the elderly and vulnerable with misleading bulk mailings that claim the recipient is guaranteed a large cash prize and advising them not to discuss this with anyone else. Following their complaint, the Advertising Standards Authority said they would be launching an investigation. The ASA investigation upheld the complaint in 2008, ruling that the Reader's Digest mailing was irresponsible and misleading and had breached three clauses of the Committee of Advertising Practice code. Reader's Digest was told not to use this mailing again.

International editions

International editions have made Reader's Digest the best-selling monthly journal in the world. Its worldwide circulation including all editions has reached 17 million copies and 70 million readers. Reader's Digest is currently published in 49 editions and 21 languages and is available in over 70 countries, including Slovenia, Croatia, and Romania in 2008.
Its international editions account for about 50% of the magazine's trade volume. In each market, local editors commission or purchase articles for their own markets and share content with U.S. and other editions. The selected articles are then translated by local translators and the translations edited by the local editors to make them match the "well-educated informal" style of the American edition.
Over the 90 years, the company has published editions in various languages in different countries, or for different regions. Often, these editions started out as translations of the U.S. version of the magazine, but over time they became unique editions, providing material more germane to local readers. Local editions that still publish the bulk of the American Reader's Digest are usually titled with a qualifier, such as the Portuguese edition, Seleções do Reader's Digest, or the Swedish edition, Reader's Digest Det Bästa.
The list is sorted by year of first publication. Some countries had editions but no longer do; for example, the Danish version of Reader's Digest ceased publication in 2005 and was replaced by the Swedish version ; as a result, the Swedish edition covers stories about both countries.