Free Hef's Little Black Book by Hugh M. Hefner

made a new magazine for himself, a magazine called Playboy.

    January 1954
    What do you say when a dream comes true? What words do you use? How can a guy possibly express a thing like this?
    I own a magazine—a magazine of my very own. Or more precisely, I am president of, and hold a majority of the stock in, a corporation that owns a magazine. Of course, we’ve very little money in the bank and the road ahead will be a rough one, but nevertheless, the dream has become a reality—and whether we succeed or fail in the months and years ahead, I’m getting my chance to try.
    Only a series of very lucky breaks has made this fantastic thing possible. If I believed in Fate, I’d think there was some sort of predestination in it. Certainly much of my life, and especially the last three or four years, has been a preparation for this. For there is nothing on earth I would rather be doing than editing and publishing this magazine called Playboy…
     
    Lucky break #1. We needed a gimmick. Something special for the first issue to talk about in my promotion letter tonewsdealers and attract attention to the magazine from the very start. We got a gimmick—the biggest one of the decade. The nude calendar of Marilyn Monroe had received unprecedented publicity all over the country, yet no magazine had published it calendar-size or in color. Life had reproduced one of the two poses in an inch-high two-color picture, and that was that. The calendar company that owned the better of the two shots (the one Life hadn’t reproduced) was located in a Chicago suburb. I walked in there cold and came out with permission to reproduce the picture in full color for $500—and they threw in the color separations on the deal, which are worth around $400 by themselves. We’ll never know how many thousands of dollars that picture was worth to us. It immediately classed us as big-time with the newsdealers and probably with our readers too.
     
    Lucky break #2. With orders for 70,000 copies in our pocket, Rochelle Printing agreed to print the magazine for a half down at the time of shipment and 90 days credit on the second half. On our monthly schedule, this was eventually worth more than ten grand in credit to us. Sax at Rochelle was willing to go along because he’d just purchased a new press and needed work for it. More special timing.
     
    Lucky break #3. Empire News took over our distribution and gave us more financial security. We got an especially good deal from them because we already had the 70,000 orders.
     
    Lucky break #4. This one concerns Central Photo Engraving and it’s a first-rate example of how we kept ?falling in, and coming out smelling like roses. I didn’t have any contacts in the engraving field, so Johnny Mastro of Esquire suggested three good houses and El went and talked to them. The first two offered good unit rates and credit. The third Johnny suggested was Central Typesetting, a big outfit that specializes in both type and engravings. When I looked up the address in the Yellow Book, I got “Central Photo Engraving” by mistake and had El go there. The place we picked by mistake gave us six months of engravings as an investment and tossed in $600 in cash.
     
    Lucky break #5. This one is the topper. I think the name of a magazine is extremely important, because it can greatly aid or limit a publication’s growth. I further feel that Playboy is the perfect title for our magazine and what we hope it will become—but we had to have the title forced on us. We were almost to press with the first issue and we were using the title “Stag Party.” With the aid of hindsight, I can say with certainty that it would have been an extremely limiting name—particularly considering how well the magazine has been accepted as more than a girlie book. It took a threatening letter just before print time from the lawyers of Stag magazine to make us abandon “Stag Party”—thoug we’d all had reservations about that title for some