Background
Doubleday was born on June 16, 1889 in Brooklyn, New York. He was the second of three children and younger son of Frank Nelson Doubleday and Neltje (De Graff) Doubleday. He was growing up in Oyster Bay, New York.
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Doubleday was born on June 16, 1889 in Brooklyn, New York. He was the second of three children and younger son of Frank Nelson Doubleday and Neltje (De Graff) Doubleday. He was growing up in Oyster Bay, New York.
Doubleday was educated at the Friends School in New York City and Holbrook Military Academy in Ossining, New York, from which he was graduated in 1908. He then attended New York University for two years.
Doubleday dropped out from the University to pursue a career in book publishing and merchandising. The decision was a natural one, for his father had entered the publishing field when Nelson was only eight years old, and in the early years of the twentieth century, with his second partner, Walter Hines Page, was making the name Doubleday synonymous with the aggressive distribution of books. Nelson's mother, under the pen name "Neltje Blanchan, " was the author of several nature books published under the Doubleday imprint.
Significantly, however, he did not join the family firm until he had established himself independently. In 1910 he started a "deferred subscription" business by which individuals could purchase unsold copies of current periodicals returned to publishers. With the profits from this venture he began to publish books under his own imprint, including a popular etiquette guide rewritten by his secretary from an earlier unsuccessful work issued by his father.
In 1916 Nelson sold his father an interest in his enterprises, and in 1918, back from wartime service in Washington, D. C. , as a naval lieutenant commander, he joined Doubleday, Page and Company as a junior partner. He rose rapidly, becoming vice-president in 1922 and president in 1928, a year after the firm merged with that of George H. Doran to become Doubleday, Doran and Company. With his father's death in 1934 he became chairman of the board as well. Perfecting techniques already developed by his father, Doubleday concentrated on the mass production of inexpensive books and their distribution to the broadest possible market. Production was handled at the firm's Country Life Press in Garden City, Long Island. Distribution was carried out through department stores and other high-volume outlets and through a variety of direct-mail book clubs and reprint divisions controlled by the parent firm: the Dollar Book Club, Garden City Reprints, the Famous Author Series, the Crime Club, Sun Dial Press, Windward House, the Mystery Guild, Doubleday Junior Books, and others. The corporation also owned a chain of twenty-six retail book stores, and in 1934 acquired full ownership of the Literary Guild of America, a book club which alone generated sales of a million books a year. A managerial genius, Doubleday exercised close supervision of these various enterprises and subdivisions, readily terminating any that proved unprofitable.
In 1937 he moved the company's business and editorial offices from Garden City to New York City's Rockefeller Center. The books Doubleday favored were those best adapted to mass-market distribution: popular fiction by such authors as Edna Ferber, Kenneth Roberts, and Daphne du Maurier; inspirational, reference, and "how-to" books; and cheap reprints of classics and established best sellers. He enthusiastically embraced advertising techniques and market strategies already well established in other avenues of commerce but hitherto somewhat resisted in the book world, with its genteel and elitist traditions.
In 1943, already ill, Doubleday appointed the firm's chief legal officer, Douglas Black, as executive vice-president. He resigned the presidency to Black in 1946 but continued as chairman of the board. He died on January 11, 1949.
(Rare 1960 American Geographical Society Around the World ...)
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Quotations: Doubleday scorned the notion prevalent among publishers that theirs was an exalted calling somewhat akin to the ministry; "I sell books, I don't read them, " he declared. Among those who found this philosophy abrasive was George Doran, who left the firm in 1930 and later wrote bitterly of his experiences as a Doubleday partner.
Commanding in appearance and in size (he was six feet five inches tall), Doubleday was identified with few public activities apart from his business.
Doubleday's first marriage, on June 10, 1916, to Martha Jewett Nicholson of Providence, Rhode Island, ended in divorce in 1931. On June 14, 1932, he married Ellen George (McCarter) Violett of Rumson, New Jersey, by whom he had two children: Nelson (later active in the family business) in 1933 and Neltje in 1934. Two daughters of his second wife by a former marriage also made their home with the Doubledays.