Sunday's issue of the New York Times Book Review includes an essay on the demise of the mass-market paperbacks. In the print edition of the newspaper, it is simply titled “Cheap Books”. The longer headline below is what was published on the Times’ website. (The photo was taken by me at the Middleton Public Library on January 31, 2002, when mass-market paperback were still in their heyday.)
Reading it gave me a warm, nostalgic feeling as I recalled the many times years ago when studiously browsing the shelves of a bookstore, waiting for a title to grab my attention and lure me with the promise of an involving read. During these visits, I often didn’t have a particular title or author in mind. It was simply an exercise in serendipity.
What
will I stumble across today?
And more
often than not I was rewarded.
One
observation made by the author pushed my thoughts in a different directions,
bringing to mind my collection development responsibilities during my library
career.
Such low prices required inexpensive
production. Because mass market spines
were glued together instead of sewn, the covers came off, or pages fell
out. Libraries rarely bought them, in
part because they were too fragile.
But they were plenty popular
elsewhere.
This
statement was certainly true in the 1960s and 1970s. Although I confess I
wasn’t the most avid library user during junior high and high school, I do
recall that the Warren Public Library had no paperback books in its adult
fiction and nonfiction collections. When I started working at the Oshkosh Public Library, paperbacks were just making their way into the collection
thanks to the proliferation of romance mass-market titles published by
Harlequin. Due to their limited shelf space, the city and county
bookmobiles had a much larger paperback collection than what was found at the
main library.
In 1980, one of my first responsibilities as Assistant Director was the reorganization of the reading and browsing area of the library, which included standalone shelving for new books, floor displays for newspapers and magazines, and clustered areas of upholstered chairs for comfortable seating. The biggest change I implemented, with the approval of the director and department heads, was the inclusion paperback “spinners” (the same items shown in the photo on the first page). I placed then along a window wall that separated the lobby and the browsing area, making this collection the first thing people saw when they walked into the library. placed them in an area where they were visible as soon as people stepped into the lobby. Mass-market paperback quickly became one of the library’s most popular collections..
I
encountered a similar situation when I became director of the Middleton Public
Library in 1986. The collection initially
contained a paltry selection of paperbacks, mostly due to a lack of space. The 5,000 square feet that the library
occupied in City Hall offered no space to expand any of the library
collections, let alone paperback.
But once we moved into a new 16,000-square-foot facility in 1990, we had the space we needed to grow the collection. By the end of the decade, the paperback collection included a dozen spinners occupying an area of prime real estate in the library. (Just inside the door from the lobby.) Each spinner was labelled by genre: mystery, science fiction/fantasy, western, classics, and nonfiction. (In addition to popular fiction titles by best-selling authors.)
The photo at the top of this post shows the collection at its peak of popularity. By 2001, the trade paperback, a larger format, bigger font size, and larger margins (i.e. more white space), started to challenge the mass-market format for supremacy. And by the end of the decade, sales of trade editions had surpassed those of mass market.
I
developed a preference for reading mass-market paperbacks in high school. I
liked the convenience and portability of the format, as I found it a lot easier
to hold while lounging – stretched out on a couch during the day or reading myself
to sleep at night. At the time I didn’t
realize the format wasn’t even 30 years old, as far as U.S. publishing history
is concerned.
Mass-market paperback made their
American debut in June 1939 when Robert Fair de Graf, a former salesman for
Doubleday, Page & Company launched Pocket Book. Every book was priced at 25 cents, compared
to $2.50 – the equivalent of nearly $60 today – for a typical hardcover edition.
Since residents in two-thirds of U.S. counites had no access to a bookstore,
Pocket Books took an expansive approach to marketing, placing wire racks of
books in drugstores, newsstands (I imagine the B&B Smoke Shop on Liberty
Street in my hometown of Warren PA got on board), chain stores like Woolworth’s and Kresge’s, and bus and
train stations. For millions of Americans, purchasing a book was no longer a
luxury. As a result, Pocket Books sold 1,500,000
copies during its first year of operation.
It was a phenomenal success.
Other publishers quickly jumped on the mass-market bandwagon: Avon (1941), Popular Library (1942), Dell (1943), and Bantam (1945). By the late 1940s, a backlash developed due to an oversaturated market – too many titles and not enough readers – combined with a deterioration in quality.
During this time, cover art took a
lurid turn, not just for so-called pulp fiction for the classic as well. On its surface, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering
Heights became nothing more than another bodice ripper. Keep in mind that these books were displayed
in business and other locations where people of all age and background
congregated.
Somebody was bound to raise a fuss.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Paperbacks started to get a sleazy reputation, a cause of degenerate
behavior. In 1952, the U.S. House of
Representatives took action and formed the Select Committee on CurrentPornographic Materials, informally known as the Gathings Commission after its
chairman Ezekiel Gathings, an Arkansas Democrat. The commission held hearings, published a report
promoting stricter laws on pornography, but put forth no new legislation. In other words, it turned to be another D.C.
tempest in a teapot.
And the paperback went on to even greater popular and financial success.
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