The Origins of the Modern Paperback and its Influence

Introduction:

The Paperback

Books are a cultural artefact, serving many needs of the society they are produced and consumed in.
Some of these needs are informative, narrative, or persuasive. Many writers find the very act of creating
a story cathartic while readers find escape or immersion in words. Through the various formats we have
had to contain and distribute the written text, the formats have served specific purposes within their
societal context. We will delve into one of these formats, the paperback, touching briefly on the history
and then exploring some of the societal impacts this print media has had on western society.

Chapter One:

History of the Modern Paperback

The concept of a soft cover for a book can be traced back to the 1600s with cloth and other soft covers
used for books that were intended to be rebound to match private collections and also for portability
(McCleery. 2007. P.3). In the late 1800s, Germany’s liberalized copyright laws allowed for lower cost
reprints in a format similar to the modern paperback (McCleery. 2007. P.4). One of the founding
members of Albatross books in Germany created a new size format for this company’s paperbacks, the
“’Golden Mean’ of 1.62” (McCleery. 2007. P.8). This allowed for a pleasing line length as well as
portability (McCleery. 2007. P.8).

The United Kingdom and the United States adopted many characteristics of the German paperback
industry. Robert de Graff, who started up Pocket Books in the United States in 1939, developed a new
distribution model and cover presentation format for this media (Menand, L. 2017).

Named after the inexpensive paper it was printed on, pulp fiction covered a wide variety of writing
genres, such as crime stories, romance, and science fiction in the early 1900s. With the onset of World
War 2, this type of novel saw a decline, many pointing to the serious nature of world events. The 1950s
saw the House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials take on many of the publishers for
what was perceived as immoral or subversive material (Menand, L. 2017).

Paperbacks continue to be a viable medium for publishers and consumers. In 2016 they outsold all other
book formats combined being only one of two formats to show positive growth numbers (Segura. 2017).

The Second Chapter:

The Societal Impact of Paperbacks

Paula Rabinowitz in her book, American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street
relates how this form of print media impacted society during its heyday from the 1930s to the 1960s.
She wrote:
“The mechanisms of pulping a work entailed a process of redistribution or, more precisely, remediation:
writings often created for an educated and elite audience took on new lives by being repackaged as
cheap paperbacks.” (Rabinowitz, P. 2014. P.23).

These new media situated privately consumed text within a social context, reimagining product
placement in the market, raising awareness of topics that otherwise did not have an outlet, and
anchoring a multimedia experience for the reader.

The Social Context

When Albatross Publishing reduced the size of a book to a more compact size, the media became
conveniently portable (McCleery. 2007. P.8). As Rabinowitz writes, “[t]his medium was designed for
maximum portability and could move seamlessly from private to public spaces” (Rabinowitz, P. 2014.
p.4). This allowed for engaging with the printed word in a social sphere, a personal interaction between
author, text, and reader. Whether reading while commuting on public transit or sitting on a park bench,
one had connection with the book while also being a part of the larger situated social dynamic. This
portability meshed with a mobilizing society.

The Economics of Paperback Media

Books were once the purview of the economically advantaged or religious authority, their price proving
prohibitive to the masses. As the cost per copy lowered, the media became accessible to more people
(Clement. R. 1997). This graph shows how, over almost 200 years, the price of books dropped, most
notably in the late 1400s (van Zanden. 2009). This had the effect of shifting control over what was
published and distributed as text media became more affordable to more people. Paperback books have
a similar effect. The School Library Journal (SLJ) average book prices for 2017 shows the price difference
between hard cover and soft cover books (Jensen, et al. 2017). Various elements of society find print
media much more accessible at the lower price point of paperbacks and thus are able to purchase
greater numbers for a more blanketed distribution. As Rabinowitz wrote,

“pulp operated across wide public spaces; it was a medium that massaged. Sheer numbers meant these
books democratized reading, allowing even poor and young people access to book ownership.”
(Rabinowitz, P. 2014. p.41)

Starting a new company in 1937, Robert de Graff desired a wider distribution network for his company’s
product. Libraries and bookstores were already catering to hard cover media. His marketing concept was
to place paperbacks where they would be more accessible for purchase. He also built the product to be
affordable for the masses, in the same price range as everyday items such as toothpaste, newspapers, or
cigarettes (Rabinowitz, P. 2014. P.57). To accomplish these two objectives, he had his product sold in
locations such as drugstores, train stations, and tobacconists and set the price of the product at twenty-
five cents. The consequences of these decisions were to bring print media to where people were, they
didn’t have to search it out, and supplied literature at a price that was seen as affordable by the masses.
In order to supply many retailers with an inexpensive product, minimum production runs in the
neighborhood of 150000 books were usually undertaken. This had the unintended consequence of
literalizing the locations where these books were purchased and consumed (Rabinowitz, P. 2014. P.66).

Opening Frontiers for Writers (and Readers)

From the 1930s through to the 1960s the paperback served writers whose works were refused by hard
cover publishers. Categories such as science fiction, romance, detective stories, and mysteries all found a
home in paperback. For writers wishing to challenge or explore societal boundaries of the day with
themes such as sexuality, racism, morality, and other period taboos, paperback format was their only
vehicle. These topics were not overtly dealt with for fear of being brought before obscenity trials
(Rabinowitz, P. 2014. P.66). To circumvent this, coded titles would indicate a book was dealing with race,
gender, or other controversial topic (Rabinowitz, P. 2014 P.70). Books were published that had themes
that paralleled world events such as stories relating to World War 2 or spies in the Cold War era,
attempting to connect with the emotional climate of the readership. By having so many genres in sales
racks next to each other, a detective story could be situated next to a Dickens, essentially blurring the
lines between classics and pulp.

A Multimedia Presentation

The paperback was, “an aesthetic object in itself.” (McCleery. 2007. P.3). In the 1930s, when Robert de
Graff decided to sell paperbacks at newsstands, drugstores, and the like, he knew that this product
would have to compete against magazines with their flashy cover art and pictures. He enlisted artists to
illustrate the front of the books. Text, format, and art converged in a multimedia offering for the
consumer. Other publishers soon followed de Graff’s lead (McCleery. 2007. P.3). In paperback format,
successive print runs would change artwork and sometimes the title in an attempt to appeal to different
prospective readers.

In the 1940s Martha Gellhorn published the book Liana. This story dealt with one of the polarizing topics
of the day, inter-racial relationships. This served author, publisher, and public, by addressing one of the
current societal issues. When it came out in paperback, the artwork for the cover displayed the favoured
style employed by publishers of paperbacks. She recounts how she happened to see a copy of the
paperback and was struck as to who would buy this book. The book reached the New York Times Best
Sellers List, but only after selling 150000 copies in the paperback format. While the story remained the
same, the artist’s cover work, cost, and accessibility drew consumers to the book (Rabinowitz, P. 2014.
P.56).

Stephen King’s two books published under the Hard Case Crime imprint, The Colorado Kid (2005) and
Joyland (2013) used artists to produce the covers for the first run editions of these books, employing an
aesthetic application popularized many years previously. Of note is that the writer chose to publish the
books first as paperbacks, with hard cover versions following late. This gave a nod to the history of crime
and mystery novels which were a mainstay of pulp fiction almost from the onset of the modern
paperback era.

The melding of media forms continued into movies and television as many paperback stories were
adapted for screen media. While drawing material from paperbacks, Hollywood also pointed an accusing
finger at the pulp paperback industries when they were under investigation for moral transgressions
(Rabinowitz, P. 2014. P.64).
The Last Chapter

The modern era of paperback was intertwined with the modernization of society, how it mediated the
private act of silent reading in public spaces, created a new economic model for the distribution of
literature, opened the door for successive generations of writers to explore all manner of topics
previously considered taboo, and how it found itself tied to visual and audio media while serving a public
that hungrily consumed the less expensive literary works for education, empowerment, and escape.

From this examination, where do we situate this literary form? Are paperbacks produced purely for the
economic benefit of the company? Was this media meant to bring literacy and intellectual
enlightenment to the masses? Was it meant to modernize society? Or do we accept that there is an
element of all of these bound up in the form of a paperback? (Greco, Albert N., et al.2013.p.1)

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