If you attended any organized school, you
likely have heard of CliffsNotes. You maybe even used them.
Cliff Keith Hillegass dropped out of a Master’s program studying
physics and geology at the University of Nebraska in 1939, got
married, and took a job working for the Nebraska Book Company.
During 1958, Cliff met
Jack Cole, the co-owner of Coles Toronto book business which
published a series of Canadian study guides called Coles Notes.
Jack agreed to sell Hillegass the US rights to the guides.
Catherine MacDonald,
was a co-founder of Cliff'sNotes (original
spelling) with her first husband, Cliff
Hillegass. She typed an initial mailing to college stores of
about 1,000 letters. Catherine operated the fledgling publishing
company out of the basement of the family home and during the
first few years shipped over a million Cliff'sNotes with a tiny
staff including the couple’s children. They divorced in 1967.
He designed the first yellow and black cover himself, with a
visual pun of an outline of mountain cliffs. He used graduate
students to write the guides. Cliff never wrote any of the
guides. He paid modest fees to its writers and no royalties,
sold printed booklets for pennies a copy.
The first run published in 1958 comprised 16 of Cole’s Notes’
Shakespeare study guides, funded with a $4,000 loan. The study
guides were a hit, selling a reported 58,000 copies in the early
going allowing Cliff to expand his enterprise. From his first
Cliff's Notes, a summary of Hamlet, in 1958. He eventually
published more than 220 titles and sold more than 50 million
CliffsNotes worldwide.
The company was selling more than 5 million pamphlets annually
and reaping multimillion-dollar profits. Cliff retired from
CliffsNotes, selling the company to IDG Books for $14 million.
He died at age 83 on 5 May, 2001.