folio-size pages, reviewed 3,907 items, and weighed 5 1/2 pounds. Before the ink was dry on the first 1980 edition, work began on a second edition that appeared in 1981.
By 1983 the personal computer market was booming. John Brockman, our literary agent in New York, suggested we ought to do a Whole Earth Catalog of software. A few months later an eight-page proposal netted Point the biggest advance for a nonfiction paperback book in history — $1.3 million. That project saved a struggling Whole Earth operation, and also nearly destroyed it. To meet the size and schedule of the project, Whole Earth staff more than doubled, and a raft of new people brought with them from the computer business different salary expectations than we were used to in the humble magazine business. Software turned out to
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ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES & EVOLUTION THROUGH THE AGES