D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency

Best known through D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency, Delano D. Cottrell was a New York businessman and postmaster from North Cohocton who built a successful mail-order magazine subscription service in the early twentieth century. Accounts of his life describe him starting the business on a dining-room table in 1905, then growing it into a nationally known operation.

The book Wholesale Price List of Newspapers and Periodicals reflects that business directly. Rather than a conventional literary work, it is a practical catalog, but today it also serves as a fascinating historical record of what Americans were reading, buying, and subscribing to at the time.

Cottrell was also active beyond publishing and business. He is remembered in horseshoe-pitching history as an organizer and promoter of the sport, showing the same talent for systems, outreach, and communication that helped make his subscription agency successful.