Editing Paperback (section)

===The early years: 1930–1950===
The German publisher [[Albatross Books]] revised the 20th-century mass-market paperback format in 1931, but the approach of [[World War II]] cut the experiment short. Albatross' innovations included a standardized size, use of new [[sans-serif]] fonts, use of logo and type on the cover without an illustration, and color-coding the covers by genre.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Troy |first=Michele K. |editor-last=Wilson |editor-first=Nicola |title=Albatross |url=https://www.modernistarchives.com/business/albatross |journal=Modernist Archives Publishing Project |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191217104432/https://www.modernistarchives.com/business/albatross |archive-date=17 December 2019 |access-date=2019-12-17}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last=Rego Barry |first=Rebecca |date=2017-04-03 |title=The Surprising History of Penguin Predecessor, the Albatross Press |url=https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/blog/surprising-history-penguin-predecessor-albatross-press |magazine=Fine Books & Collections |location=Chapel Hill, NC |publisher=OP Media, LLC |access-date=2019-12-17}}</ref>

[[File:George Orwell - Keep the Aspidistra Flying.jpg|thumb|upright|1936 Penguin book. Color-coded orange and white for general fiction]]
In 1935, British publisher [[Allen Lane]], investing his own capital, initiated the paperback revolution in the English-language book market by releasing ten reprint titles to launch the [[Penguin Books]] imprint. They adopted many of Albatross's innovations, including a conspicuous logo, using only type on the cover, and color-coded covers for different genres.

The first book on Penguin's 1935 list was [[André Maurois]]' ''Ariel''.<ref>McCleery, Alistair. "The Return of the Publisher to Book History: The Case of Allen Lane". ''Book History''. 5 (2002): 161–185. {{JSTOR|30228189}}. Retrieved 10 October 2015.</ref>

Lane intended to produce inexpensive books. He purchased paperback rights from publishers, ordered large [[Edition (book)#Print run|print runs]] (such as 20,000 copies—large for the time) to keep [[unit price]]s low, and looked to non-traditional book-selling retail locations. Booksellers were initially reluctant to buy his books, but when [[Woolworths Group plc|Woolworths]] placed a large order, the books sold extremely well. After that initial success, booksellers showed more willingness to stock paperbacks, and the name "Penguin" became closely associated with the word "paperback" in Great Britain.{{citation needed|date=December 2018}}

In the United States, Robert de Graaf created the [[Pocket Books]] label in 1939, partnering with [[Simon & Schuster]] to issue a similar line of reprints. Because at first Pocket Books was the only publisher of paperbacks, the term "pocket book" became synonymous with paperback in English-speaking North America. (In France, the term ''livre de poche'', which translates as "pocket book", was used and is still in use today.) De Graaf, like Lane, negotiated paperback rights from other publishers, and produced many runs. His practices contrasted with those of Lane by his adoption of illustrated covers aimed at the North American market. To reach an even broader market than Lane, he used distributors of newspapers and magazines to distribute his books because they had a lengthy history of being aimed (in format and distribution) at mass audiences.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Korda|first1=Michael|title=Another life: a memoir of other people|url=https://archive.org/details/anotherlifememoi00kord|url-access=registration|date=1999|publisher=Random House|location=New York|isbn=0679456597|edition=1st}}</ref> Pocket Books were not available in book stores because they did not carry magazines.

Pocket Books established the format for all subsequent paperback publishers in the 1940s. The books measured 6.5" by 4.25" (16.5&nbsp;cm by 10.8&nbsp;cm), had full-color covers, and cost 25 cents. Eventually in the 1950s the height increased by 0.5" (1.4&nbsp;cm) to 7" (18&nbsp;cm). The width remained the same because wire display racks used in many locations could not hold wider books. With the larger size came a higher price, first 35 cents and then 50 cents.

Because of its number-one position in what became a very long list of pocket editions, [[James Hilton (novelist)|James Hilton]]'s ''[[Lost Horizon (novel)|Lost Horizon]]'' is often cited as the first American paperback book. However, the first mass-market, pocket-sized, paperback book printed in the U.S. was an edition of [[Pearl Buck]]'s ''[[The Good Earth]]'', produced by Pocket Books as a proof-of-concept in late 1938, and sold in New York City.<ref>{{cite journal |title=How the Paperback Novel Changed Popular Literature |first=Anne |last=Trubek |author-link=Anne Trubek |date=March 30, 2010 |journal=[[Smithsonian (magazine)|Smithsonian]] |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-the-paperback-novel-changed-popular-literature-11893941/ |access-date=2024-04-02 |quote=in 1938 ... The first Pocket Book title was The Good Earth by Pearl Buck, and it was sold in [[Macy's Herald Square|Macy’s]]<!--This was the only Macy's location from 1902 until the 1960s, and Macy's didn't exist outside NYC until 1983-->.}}</ref>

The first ten Pocket Book titles published in May 1939 with a print run of about 10,000 copies each were:
#''[[Lost Horizon]]'' (1933) by [[James Hilton (novelist)|James Hilton]]
#''[[Wake Up and Live]]'' (1936) by [[Dorothea Brande]]
#''Five Great Tragedies'' by [[William Shakespeare]]
#''[[Topper (novel series)|Topper]]'' (1926) by [[Thorne Smith]]
#''[[The Murder of Roger Ackroyd]]'' (1926) by [[Agatha Christie]]
#''Enough Rope'' (1926) by [[Dorothy Parker]]
#''[[Wuthering Heights]]'' (1847) by [[Emily Brontë]]
#''[[The Way of All Flesh]]'' (1903) by [[Samuel Butler (novelist)|Samuel Butler]]
#''[[The Bridge of San Luis Rey]]'' (1927) by [[Thornton Wilder]]
#''[[Bambi, A Life in the Woods|Bambi]]'' (1928 English translation) by [[Felix Salten]]<ref name="NY">{{cite news |last=Ennis |first=Thomas W. |title=Robert F. De Graff Dies At 86; Was Pocket Books Founder |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/03/obituaries/robert-f-de-graff-dies-at-86-was-pocket-books-founder.html |access-date=November 9, 2019 |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=November 3, 1981}}</ref>

This list includes seven novels, the most recent being six year old (''[[Lost Horizon]]s'', 1933), two classics (Shakespeare and ''Wuthering Heights'', both out of copyright), one mystery novel, one book of poetry (''Enough Rope''), and one self-help book.

The success of Pocket Books led to others entering the market. In 1941, [[American News Company]], a magazine distributor, bought a [[dime novel]] publisher partially owned by brother and sister Joseph Meyers and Edna Meyers Williams and hired them to organize a new company called "Avon Publications". [[Avon (publisher)|Avon]] copied the basic format established by Pocket Books but differentiated itself by emphasizing, as a book on collecting paperbacks says, "popular appeal rather than loftier concepts of literary merit."<ref>Canja, Jeff. (2002) ''Collectable Paperback Books, Second Edition'', East Lansing, MI: Glenmoor Publishing. {{ISBN|0-9673639-5-0}}</ref> In 1953, ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine summarized its books as "westerns, whodunits, and the kind of boy-meets-girl story that can be illustrated by a ripe cheesecake jacket [cover]".<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20071014215505/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,818695,00.html "Highbrow Smorgasbord"], ''Time'', August 10, 1953.</ref>

The next year [[Dell Publishing]], which was founded in 1921 by [[George T. Delacorte Jr.]] to publish [[pulp magazines]], joined with [[Western Publishing]] to publish [[Dell Books]]. Like Avon, Dell followed the basic format established by Pocket Books. But within that format, "Dell achieved more variety than any of its early competitors [with its] . . . instantly identifiable format of vibrant airbrushed covers for its predominantly genre fiction", specialized logos and special features like maps and lists of characters.

[[World War II]] brought both new technology and a wide readership of men and women serving in the military or employed as shift workers; paperbacks were cheap, readily available, and easily posted and carried. Furthermore, people found that restrictions on travel gave them time to read more paperbacks. [[Four-color printing]] (invented in 1906<ref>{{Cite web |date=2015-03-24 |title=A very brief history of CMYK - Alexander's |url=https://alexanders.com/blog/a-very-brief-history-of-cmyk/ |access-date=2025-05-28 |website=Alexanders Print Advantage - Web To Print Experts |language=en-US}}</ref>) and [[lamination]] (invented in 1936<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14733285.2021.1965089 | doi=10.1080/14733285.2021.1965089 | title=The lamination machine and laminating as thing-power in early childhood pedagogical practice | date=2022 | last1=Skreland | first1=Lisbeth Ljosdal | last2=Steen-Johnsen | first2=Tale | journal=Children's Geographies | volume=20 | issue=5 | pages=701–713 | hdl=11250/2835029 | hdl-access=free }}</ref>) developed for military maps made the paperback cover eye catching and kept ink from running as people handled the book. A revolving metal rack (invented in 1906), designed to display a wide variety of paperbacks in a small space, found its way into [[pharmacy|drugstore]]s, [[dimestore]]s, and markets.

During World War II, the U.S. military distributed some 122 million "[[Armed Services Editions]]" <ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/publishers-gave-away-122951031-books-during-world-war-ii/379893/ |title=Publishers Gave Away 122,951,031 Books During World War II |first=Yoni |last=Appelbaum |date=10 September 2014 |work=The Atlantic}}</ref> paperback novels to the troops. After the war, the former servicemembers' familiarity with paperbacks helped popularize the format.<ref name="Atlas Obscura 2017">{{cite web |last1=Giaimo |first1=Cara |title=How Books Designed for Soldiers' Pockets Changed Publishing Forever |url=https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/armed-services-editions-pocket-paperback-books |website=[[Atlas Obscura]] |access-date=29 December 2018 |language=en |date=22 September 2017}}</ref>

Two new developments changed the nature of the mass-market paperback business. One was the decision by publishers to publish more recent best selling books than the older books originally published by Pocket Book. They sought reprint rights on new books and soon found themselves in competition for the biggest sellers, leading to bidding against each other for the rights and costing them more money.

The second development was the [[spinner rack]], a metal pole with a four-sided wire frame designed to vertically hold rows of racks of paperback books. Retail store owners no longer had to devote feet of valuable counter space to low-profit paperbacks. Dozens of paperbacks could be displayed vertically in five or six square feet of floor space. (Similar racks were available for magazines and comic books.) By the late 1940s, paperback spinner racks were ubiquitous in large and small towns across the United States, in every local grocery store, drug store, [[dime store]], and bus and train station, displaying everything from best sellers and mysteries and westerns to classics and Shakespeare. In 1955, in [[William Inge]]'s [[Broadway play]] ''[[Bus Stop (William Inge play)|Bus Stop]]'', it did not seem unbelievable that a long-distance bus traveller stranded by a snowstorm in an out-of-the-way cafe walks to a shelf and picks up a paperback copy of ''Four Tragedies of Shakespeare''. "Sometimes one can find Shakespeare on these shelves among the many lurid novels of juvenile delinquents," he comments.<ref>William Inge, "[https://archive.org/details/bus-stop-william-inge Act Two]", ''Bus Stop'', (Random House), p. 78, accessed 3/6/2023</ref>

In 1945, [[Bantam Books]] was formed by [[Walter B. Pitkin Jr.]], Sidney B. Kramer, and husband and wife [[Ian Ballantine|Ian]] and [[Betty Ballantine]] as a mass-market paperback publisher.

The fifth major 1940s publisher of mass-market paperbacks was [[New American Library]]. Originally Penguin USA, it became a separate publisher in 1948 as the New American Library of World Literature when it separated from Penguin and [[Victor Weybright]] and [[Kurt Enoch]] took over. Its original focus was classics and scholarly works as well as popular and pulp fiction. Eventually it shortened its name to New American Library and published books in the ''Mentor'' and ''Signet'' lines.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/02/01/96415865.html?pageNumber=76 |url-access=subscription |title=People Who Read and Write| work= The New York Times |access-date=2016-04-10}}</ref>

New paperback publishers continued to enter the market - [[Lion Books (publisher)|Lion Books]] and [[Jove Books|Pyramid Books]]  (both 1949), [[Fawcett Publications|Fawcett]] [[Gold Medal Books]] (1950), [[Ace Books]] and [[Ballantine Books]] (both 1952), and [[Berkley Books]] (1955).

U.S. paperbacks quickly entered the Canadian market. Canadian mass-market paperback initiatives in the 1940s included White Circle Books, a subsidiary of Collins (UK.); it was fairly successful but was soon outstripped by the success of [[Harlequin Enterprises|Harlequin]] which began in 1949 and, after a few years of publishing undistinguished novels, focused on the romance genre and became one of the world's largest publishers.