INTRODUCTION

 

 

A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America—a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and how people would purchase and read them.

In 1939 a new publishing company—Pocket Books—stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book.  These books were cheaply produced and sold in numbers never before seen, in large part due to a bold and innovative distribution model that soon after made Pocket Books available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops.  The American public could not get enough of them, and before long the publishing industry began to take notice of Pocket Book’s astonishing success. 

Traditional publishers, salivating at the opportunity to cash in on the phenomenal success of the new paperback revolution, soon launched their own paperback ventures.  Pocket Books was joined by Avon in 1941, Popular Library in 1942, and Dell in 1943. The popular genres reflected the tastes of Americans during World War II—mysteries, thrillers, and “hardboiled detective” stories were all the rage. 

World War II proved to be a boon to the emerging paperback industry.  During the war, a landmark agreement was reached with the government in which paperbound books would be produced at a very low price for distribution to service men and women overseas.  These books were often passed from one soldier or sailor to another, being read and re-read over and over again until they literally fell apart.  Their stories of home helped ease the servicemen’s loneliness and homesickness, and they could be easily carried and read anywhere—in fox holes, barracks, transport planes, etc. Of course, once the war was over millions of veterans returned home with an insatiable appetite for reading.  They were hooked, and their passion for reading these books helped launch a period of unprecedented growth in the paperback industry.

In the early 1950’s new genres emerged—science fiction, lesbian fiction, juvenile delinquent and “sleaze”, for instance—that would tantalize readers with gritty, sinful stories never seen before.  Publishers had come to realize that sex sells.  In a competitive frenzy for readers, they tossed away their staid and straightforward cover images for alluring covers that frequently featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised stories of sex and violence within the covers.  Before long, books with sensational covers had completely taken over the paperback racks and cash registers.  To this day, the cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago.  

We are excited to make these wonderful paperback stories available in ebook format to new generations of readers.  We present them in their original form with very little editing so as to preserve the tone and atmosphere of the time period.  In fact, much of the language—the slang, the colloquialisms, the lingo, even the spellings of some words—appear as they were written fifty or sixty years ago.  We hope you will enjoy this nostalgic look back at a period in American history when dames were dangerous, tough-guys were deadly and dolls were downright delicious.