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How was the Big Book paid for and published (Works Publishing)?

In short:

  • In 1938 the publisher Harper offered Bill W. an advance for the book. He and his partner Hank P. decided the fellowship should own its own book, and instead formed their own company, Works Publishing, selling $25 shares to members and friends.
  • They sold 200 shares for $5,000, mostly in monthly installments, after a Reader's Digest editor seemed to promise an article. A loan from Charles B. Towns, owner of the hospital where Bill got sober, helped too. Cornwall Press printed 5,000 copies for a $500 down payment, and the book came out in April 1939 at $3.50.
  • The Digest article never came, and for months the book didn't sell. Publicity in 1939 and 1940 finally moved it.
  • In 1940 the Alcoholic Foundation bought out the cash shareholders with money lent by Rockefeller and his friends, and Bill and Hank gave up their shares, so the Big Book came to belong to A.A. as a whole.

What the book itself shows

The 1939 text doesn't tell how it was financed. The copyright page of today's edition lists the first edition as running from 1939 to 1955, and the copyright is now held by A.A. World Services, Inc. (p. iv). The 1955 foreword says only that the members' determination "bore fruit in the spring of 1939 by the publication of this volume" (p. xvii). See Why was the Big Book written, and when?

The decision to self-publish (1957, and P-44)

In the fall of 1938, through trustee Frank Amos, Bill showed two chapters to Eugene Exman, religious editor at Harper, who offered a $1,500 advance on royalties (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Bill had second thoughts: if the book became the fellowship's main text, "Our principal written asset would then be owned by an outside publisher" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). The trustees favored Harper, but Hank P. pressed for a stock company of their own (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Exman himself agreed that a society like theirs should publish its own literature (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). P-44 (Bill, describing events through 1955) puts the reason plainly: "No publisher, however good, ought to own our best asset." (P-44).

Hank's prospectus offered 600 shares at $25: a third for cash to New York members and friends, two-thirds to Hank and Bill for their work, with the author's royalty assigned to the Foundation to soothe the trustees (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). He named the company "Since the forthcoming volume would be only the first of many such 'works,'" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), and bought blank stock certificates at a stationery store (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

Raising the money

At first nobody bought: "What made you think that we would buy stock in a book not yet written?" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Then the managing editor of the Reader's Digest said he was almost sure the magazine would run a story when the book was ready (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). With that, "Soon we had a subscription of 200 shares which amounted to $5,000" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), paid in installments of five dollars a month (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Charles B. Towns lent $2,500 (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), a sum Bill elsewhere says later grew to over $4,000 (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). The money went for office costs and groceries for Bill, Lois, Hank and the secretary, Ruth Hock, until publication (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

Printing, and the slump

Edward Blackwell of Cornwall Press suggested a first printing of 5,000 and accepted $500 down (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). They set the price at $3.50 after heated argument, and to give buyers their money's worth used the thickest paper in the shop: "The original volume proved to be so bulky that it became known as the 'Big Book.'" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).

When Bill and Hank went back to the Reader's Digest, the editor had forgotten them; his staff had turned the idea down (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). "The book enterprise had collapsed." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Twenty-eight copies were owed to the story writers and forty-nine to subscribers (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Blackwell stood by them (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). A radio appearance and 20,000 postcards to doctors brought two orders (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). An A.A. tailor, Bert T., borrowed $1,000 against his own business to keep the company going (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Sales began with a Liberty magazine article in September 1939 (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), and grew after Rockefeller's dinner in 1940 (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). See Why did early A.A. turn down Rockefeller money?

How A.A. came to own it

By 1940 some cash subscribers wanted their money back (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Trustee A. LeRoy Chipman borrowed $8,000 from Rockefeller, two of his sons and dinner guests to buy their shares at par, to be repaid from book profits (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Bill turned his 200 shares over to the Foundation; Hank, then drinking, agreed only when the Foundation paid him $200 for office furniture he owned (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). "And that is how the society of Alcoholics Anonymous, through its Trustees, came to own the Big Book." (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). P-44 adds that two years later the book had done so well that the loan was paid off (P-44).

Where the sources differ

  • Hank's shares. P-44 says "Hank P. and I donated our shares in it to the Alcoholic Foundation" (P-44). Bill's 1957 book and Pass It On (1984) say Hank resisted and gave his up for a $200 payment for furniture (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957; Pass It On, 1984).
  • The company's name. Bill (1957) says Hank chose "Works" because the book would be the first of many works (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Pass It On calls it "a matter of some dispute": some said it came from Anne Smith's favorite verse, "Faith without works is dead"; "others said it was named for a favorite slogan of the membership" (Pass It On, 1984), "It works!"
  • The Towns loan. $2,500 (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957; P-44), or "later increased to over $4,000" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).
  • Who was responsible. Pass It On reports Hank's son's view that Hank got the project rolling, and Ruth Hock's that the two were about equally responsible: without Bill it wouldn't have been written, and "it wouldn't have been published without Hank" (Pass It On, 1984).

Read it yourself

Sources

Source Pages Date
Alcoholics Anonymous, copyright page; Foreword to the Second Edition iv, xvii 2001 printing; 1955
P-44, A.A.'s Legacy of Service (Bill W.) — describes events through 1955; pamphlet © 2018
A.A. Comes of Age — 1957
Pass It On — 1984

Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book, P-44, A.A. Comes of Age and Pass It On are © A.A. World Services, Inc.

These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.