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PAPERBACK PUBLISHING

An Industry in Decline

At the beginning of the 1950s book publishing seemed to be in trouble. Sales were in decline, and readers seemed to be showing less and less interest in hardcover books. Brentano's Book Store in New York City, which carried about a one-thousand-title stock, reported that 50 percent of its annual sales came at Christmas, when gift buyers were searching desperately for presents. Fortune reported an unnamed major publisher's estimate that 60 percent of its annual sales were institutional—that is, to libraries and schools. Book clubs selling hardcover books were doing as badly. Between 1947 and 1952 Book-of-the-Month Club membership fell from nine hundred thousand to five hundred thousand. The book-buying public seemed to be dwindling.

Causes

Reasons for the apparent decline in readership were publicly debated. Television was the culprit of choice, though there was spotty evidence to back up the belief that potential readers spent too much time watching their new televisions to buy books. Price was blamed by others. Trade books (those sold in bookstores), which averaged $3.50 per title and ranged from $2.50 to $6.00 in 1953, were too expensive, some said.

Price

Some credence was given the price argument by the success of paperbacks, which typically cost 25¢ or 35¢ in the early 1950s (though some were as costly as 75¢). In 1953, 35 percent of all book purchases were paperbacks. That year 295 million paperbacks from sixteen publishers were sold, bringing total sales since Pocket Books introduced trade paperbacks in 1939 to over 1.75 billion copies.

Distribution

There were important reasons for the success of paperbacks other than price. Availability was one. In 1953 there were about three thousand bookstores in America, and hardcover books rarely sold elsewhere. There were one hundred thousand retail outlets for paperbacks, which were distributed to retailers much as magazines were by about one thousand independent distributors, roughly one third of which belonged to the powerful American News Group, which had a virtual monopoly over newsstands in large cities.

Material

Conservative observers argued that the success of the paperback publishers was the result of the material they published. Paperbacks, like the pulp magazines and dime novels that preceded them, pandered to a low audience attracted by lurid covers and sex-oriented topics, critics charged. There was no denying the criticism, but it was an oversimplification. It is true that in 1952 Mickey Spillane's novels accounted for about one-fourth of all paperback sales, but the titles of other top sellers are significant. The British firm Penguin, which set up its American branch in Baltimore, reported Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Taies and Dante's Inferno among their bestselling titles. The Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care sold 5 million copies early in the 1950s, Webster's Pocket Dictionary 4.5 million, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey 800,000 each, and Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture 400,000 copies.

Generic Reads

Paperbacks did so well during the early 1950s that some publishers suspected that titles did not matter—anything would sell; but they made the mistake of underestimating the American reader. By 1953, 25 million copies of one hundred titles a month were being sent to distributors. The market was glutted, and publishers paid the price for their cynicism. Books were sold to retailers with return privileges, allowing the return of unsold copies for full credit. At the start of the decade hardback publishers reported average returns of 8.5 percent for trade books, and paperback publishers reported 10 percent returns. By the middle of the decade paperback returns had risen to about 35 percent, with some publishers admitting 50 percent returns. It was a serious problem that had to be addressed.

Support for Hardback Publishers

Even with their problems, the paperback industry provided a much-needed financial boost to hardcover publishers. The economics of paperback publishing is based on slim margins of profit. The publishers saved on printing costs by using cheap materials and printing large quantities. Gold Medal reported that it never printed fewer than 200,000 copies, for example. Paperback publishers paid reduced royalties. On a 25¢ book, Gold Medal paid 1¢ on the first 150,000 copies, 1.5¢ thereafter; other paperback publishers paid royalties of about 7.5 percent of the retail price.

Economics

Paperback publishers did not advertise, saving about 10 percent of the retail price, the amount customarily reserved by hardback publishers for promotion. Paperback publishers looked to hardcover houses to introduce a book so it could be effectively distributed, and they paid the hardback publisher for reprint rights, an amount that often made the difference between profit and loss on an average hardcover book. Half the paper-back income went to the author, half to the publisher. As the decade progressed, advances went up to what some thought were disastrous heights. When New American Library paid $101,000 for reprint rights to James Jones's From Here to Eternity, some insiders thought it was a move toward bankruptcy. The book, which sold 240,000 copies in hardcover, sold 6 million copies in paperback. New American Library grossed about $2.5 million on the book.