Homeless street paper vendors made a combined profit of £1.1 million thanks to a Dalai Lama special.
The exclusive interview and photos were used by 72 publications in 27 countries, including The Big Issue in the UK, and led to sell-outs across the globe.
The interview, secured by Scottish charity the International Network of Street Papers (INSP), featured on the cover of its member publications throughout the summer, with the last edition hitting the streets of Montreal this weekend.
One million copies of the Dalai Lama edition have been sold by more than 10,000 vendors, and volunteers for the Glasgow-based charity translated the story into 13 languages, including Slovak and Japanese.
In the interview, the Dalai Lama directly addressed the vendors. He advised them on how to deal with loneliness and stressed the importance of independent media, including street papers, in society.
One vendor, known as Paddy, who sells The Big Issue UK in Glasgow, said: "The Dalai Lama edition was the best cover we've had for ages.
"I walked into the Big Issue offices and just thought 'Wow, they're gonna sell like hot cakes'.
"A good cover tells me I'll have a good week. I sold 70 copies that week."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article