was equivalent to the cost of a pack a cigarettes a day. In 1962, the new 24-volume Collier's Encyclopedia was priced at $299.50, payable over 3 years, or at a daily cost of 27 cents. The average cost of a pack of cigarettes that year was also 27 cents. This was an affordable price for middle and low income families. For many families, owning a set of Collier's Encyclopedia became a status symbol. P.F. Collier and Son had credit qualification standards for purchasers. In the 1950s, one of the qualifiers to determine if a family could afford the books was the presence of a telephone in the household. A company branch manager was required to phone the household to verify the details of each in-home sales order. Collier's Encyclopedia proved highly profitable for P.F. Collier and Son. In 1956, John G. Ryan reported a net profit of 20% of on $25 million in sales revenue. supplying the revenue that kept P.F. Collier and Son's parent company, the Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, solvent as it suffered huge losses from its failing magazine business. P.F. Collier and Son's profits from sales of Collier's Encyclopedia also funded Crowell Collier's expansion into radio stations and its 1960 purchase/merger with the Macmillan publishing company. With his company's profits soaring, Ryan directed Collier's Encyclopedia Editor-in-Chief William Terry Couch and P.F. Collier publications director Everett Fontaine to compile an expanded revision of Collier's Encyclopedia by 1962. The 24-volume 1962 edition of Collier's Encyclopedia had an imposing list of contributors, embracing authorities from universities, professional societies, government, and industry. The articles were arranged to provide first, a simple explanation and basic facts, and then followed with more detailed Information. The 1962 edition contained 6,000 new illustrations, many in color, and 1,450 maps, 150 in color. One of Collier's Encyclopedias strong features was its bibliography, which provided additional sources for further reading. Although work on the 1962 edition of Collier's Encyclopedia was authorized by P.F. Collier and Son President John Ryan, and initiated by his editorial staff, the completed 1962 work was published by the parent company, Crowell Collier, which had merged with its P.F. Collier and Son subsidiary in December 1960, and assumed its former subsidiary's publishing and sales financing activities. In 1993, a French publisher, Atlas Editions, a subsidiary of the Italian publishing giant De Agostini, acquired Collier's Encyclopedia from Macmillan Inc., the corporate name Crowell Collier assumed