What complicates matters is that Mr. Temkin is in the process of moving his offices to another floor; has ad and his staff of 80 are packing everything into cardboard boxes, and now it's impossible to find anything. But the short, pink-faced man with gold-framed spectacles takes it all in stride. He lights a Lucky Strike, props one hand against his chin, and explains how he got to be the head of Berkley Books, which has long been the paperback division of G.P. Putnam. "I came to New York in 1960 as a lawyer. I became assistant U.S. attorney in '61. I stayed there till '64," he relates in short bursts of speech. "Then I went into private practice until September of 1967, when I got into the book business. I became house counsel at Bantam Books, and worked my way up, and later became a vice president. I came here in July of 1977 as president and chief executive officer. "Since that time, we purchased Jove Books from Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. It's another paperback house. ... Berkley does largely reprints of hardcovers, but Jove does exclusively paperback originals. Together, the two companies put out about 300 or 325 books a year. Of these, 120 are from Jove." Berkley Books, he admits, is one of the smaller paperback houses, perhaps sixth or seventh. But the company manages to get its share of best-sellers. At New Year's two were in the nation's top 10 -- _Mommie Dearest_ by Christina Crawford and _Nurse_ by Peggy Anderson. _Mommie Dearest_, says Temkin, "is the first time we've had a story of child abuse at that level off society, which I think is a great thing for the people to read. It isn't only poor kids that get beat up, it's the rich kids too -- just as badly." In terms of sales and profits, he says, "There's no such thing as an average book. It depends on what you pay for the advance and what the cost of manufacturing the book is. ... I can have books sell 50,000 copies and make a profit, or I can have books sell a million copies and lose money. ... It's not hard to spend a million dollars on a book. That's easy to do. The hard thing is to find a book like _Nurse_, where you didn't pay the million for it and you can sell a million and a half. We jumped in and bought it early on, before it was a hardcover best-seller." Berkley's hottest author at present is John Jakes, whose seven-volume Kent family saga has sold 30 million copies. Jakes' new book, _The Americans_, is scheduled to be out in February 1980. "The first printing is over three million copies," says Temkin. "We expect it to be a number one best-seller.. ... What a great success story. John has been around for many many years and he's written a lot of books but he's never had the commercial success until that came along. You can never tell in this business. That's why we're in it: You don't know what tomorrow's going to be."