I was curious about a small detail in the article about Joaquin Murieta. The response talks about the 1854 California Police Gazette articles about him, and then says they were released in paperback five years later (i. e., 1859.)
Based on what little I have read of the subject, I always thought that paperback books didn’t appear until World War II in response to the general shortage of most kinds of materials, reservation of what was available for the war effort, and ease of distribution.
Could Cecil enlighten the masses on this issue? When did paperbacks appear? Is the WWII reference to the form in which we are familiar with them today? Did they exist in a somewhat different form before then? Or have they been around in their present form, more or less, for longer and didn’t become “mainstreamed” until WWII?
Thanks!
Link to Staff Report added-- CKDH
The modern paperback tradition in the USA started with the founding of Pocket Books in 1939, so shortages weren’t an issue. No doubt later wartime shortages were a factor in their success.
But there were paperbacks long before Pocket Books; they’re nearly the old as printing. However, they were generally held in the roughly the same esteem as comic books. (Indeed, in the 40’s, comic books largely ate up the old paperbacks’ market.) Pocket Books made paperbacks more or less respectable.
The paperback industry (as opposed to paper bound books, which are much older) begins in the middle of the 19th century, when high speed presses become available to print quantities in the hundreds of thousands.
These were not what we think of today as paperbacks. They were larger, about the size of small books, and had thin paper covers rather than the heavy stock that modern paperback covers are printed on. Their paper was usually cheap and thick and few have held up. One in good condition from the 1860s would be worth a lot of money.
They were aimed at the same populations who were building up the circulations of the penny newspapers that were also made possible by the same presses. Westerns, mysteries, and romance were the favorite subjects and “lurid” was what the upper classes called them. The books often sold for a dime and became known collectively as dime movels (penny dreadfuls in England).
Stanford seems to have a big collection. You can get a lot of info there, including a time line. This other page has a few great covers. Here’s a page of books aimed at women.
Prices for hardbacks had reached an intolerable two dollars in the 1930s so many cheaper ways to put out books were being explored. Dozens of publishers put out cheap hardback reprint editions and publishers like Modern Age reprinted “good” books in soft covers using the same printing plates, which meant they were the same size as the originals.
In England, Alan Lane came up with the idea for the small-size paperback or pocket book as we know it today in 1935. This lead to Penguin Books being started the next year. Pocket Books copied the idea, but used pictures on their covers, in 1939. They sold by the millions. Penguin gained a reputation for printing large numbers of classic books in soft covers. Pocket Books found that nothing sold like mysteries.
Soon paperbacks were “lurid” again. Kayo Books has a huge and wonderful collection of these.