When John H. Johnson published Negro Digest on November 1, 1942, his printer realized it wasn’t for John’s employer, Supreme Life Insurance, and that it had unknowingly subsidized the magazine. To pay the printer, John had to sell the remaining 2,000 copies quickly.
According to his autobiography, John called the biggest magazine distributor in Chicago and was told that “colored books don’t sell.” John sent thirty Supreme coworkers to buy his magazine at the distributor’s newsstands using money he gave them. This prompted the distributor to buy John’s remaining inventory and then some. The distributor started pushing the magazine aggressively and introduced John to other distributors in major cities. Within eight months, he was selling 50,000 copies a month. In July 1943, he took a leave of absence from Supreme and hired a secretary.
John couldn’t crack 50,000 in circulation, so he wrote First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt a letter asking her to write an article in his “If I Was a Negro” column. John was persistent, and she agreed. National media picked up the article, and circulation soared to 100,000 copies. John bought a building for $4,000 and hired a permanent staff in 1944.
John realized he had knowledge gaps in the publishing business, so he cold-called top executives at prominent magazines. He quickly learned that people will tell you everything they know when you confess your ignorance. Gaining wisdom from credible insiders provided John with the blueprints for what he wanted to build and how to build it.
John didn’t have loans or investors, so he faced cash flow issues that forced him to learn cash flow management and to do some questionable things with checks and bank accounts.
In 1945, World War II was raging, and wartime rationing meant that John’s fast-growing company was using more paper than the law allowed. The U.S. government issued him a violation. He had to reduce the number of copies he printed and send the company into bankruptcy or keep printing and go to jail. John claimed ignorance of the law and passionately appealed to the War Production Board. Twenty-four other people, with their lawyers, also appeared before the board that day. John, who by design didn’t have a lawyer, was the only one who got a hardship exemption.
John refocused on the business, and two of his freelancers approached him with an idea for a new photograph-based magazine named Jive. John didn’t like the idea, but he respected their contributions to his magazine and agreed to partner with them three ways on the idea. Each would put up $1,000. After working on the concept, the freelancers didn’t put up their share of the money, so John funded the entire project and took ownership. This ended up being the turning point in his life.
Even though he was skeptical, he kept working on the idea. He eventually realized that America was shifting from reading and wanted to see themselves and the people they admired in pictures. John slowly saw that the shift to photographs could be a way to emphasize the positive aspects of Black life, highlight the significant achievements of Blacks, make Blacks proud of themselves, and recharge Black people using positivity. This became his philosophy for the new concept. John hated the name Jive, and when Eunice suggested Ebony, John ran with it.
The first issue was published November 1, 1945, by John, then 27, and a team of two other people. John initially ran Ebony with no ads to ensure that it was high quality. Ebony was a breakout success and instantly surpassed Negro Digest as the top Black publication. However, as more copies were sold, John lost more money. People praised him in public, but John hid from creditors. The high-quality magazine was expensive to produce compared to Negro Digest, which was backed by ad revenue. By the end of 1946, John was in a tough spot. He couldn’t cut Ebony’s circulation because that would reduce potential future ad revenue. But he was losing a fortune every month.
John devised a twofold strategy. He launched five mail-order businesses that he could advertise in his magazines. The revenue from product sales from the mail-order companies would offset the cash burn from Ebony. He then started personally selling ads to executives of ad agencies and then large companies. He was relentless. He called one CEO 400 times and stalked another on a train weekly for three weeks.
After two years on the verge of collapse, Ebony turned around when the ad dollars started flowing regularly. John hired the best ad person he could find and built a team of ad salespeople. He’d run the gauntlet. Seven years after launching Negro Digest, John was 31 and a millionaire. But he was still insecure and scared of failure. His fears would be a key factor driving John’s next bold bet.
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