People magazine cost 40 million dollars, one of largest magazine investments ever

Evidence

With $40 million sunk into it by Time-Life, the new People was one of the largest investments in magazine history. Stolley was unabashed explaining the concept, “There is nothing abstract about the name. People is what we are all about.” The critical class, however, did not appreciate the beauty of that simplicity. William Safire, for instance, then a new columnist for The New York Times, wrote an essay entitled “Who Needs People?,” describing the magazine as an “insult to the American mass audience.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 761

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what was the return on that $40 million, and how did the investment compare to other Time-Life ventures?
• XREF: connects to: People magazine reversed decades of issue-oriented magazine journalism — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 756