[6] Growing up, Stratemeyer read the works of Horatio Alger and William T. Adams, writers who penned rags-to-riches tales of the hardworking young American, which greatly influenced him.

[6] As a teenager, Stratemeyer operated his own printing press in the basement of his father's tobacco shop, distributing flyers and pamphlets among his friends and family.

At the age of 26, he sold his first story, Victor Horton's Idea, to the children's magazine Golden Days for $76, over six times the average 1888 weekly paycheck.

(A less-reliable source says that Stratemeyer was hired by Patten to write as an editor for the Street & Smith publication Good News.

That same year, after Alger died, Stratemeyer wrote and published The Rover Boys, which became a tremendously popular series in the vein of the classic dime novel.

A humble man, he never sought public attention and preferred living a private and quiet life with his family at their home on N. 7th Street in the Roseville section of Newark.

[13] On May 12, 1930, two days after his death, the New York Times reported that his Rover Boys series "had sales exceeding 5,000,000 copies".

[6] Stratemeyer pioneered the book-packaging technique of producing a consistent, long-running series of books using a team of freelance writers.

All of the freelance writers, including Mildred Benson, who developed the character of Nancy Drew, were published under a pen name owned by his company.