Pocket Books
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The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933), 1953 Pocket Books edition |
Pocket Books go back as early as 1744 in England and 1787 in America, in
The Pretty Little Pocket Book (see the external links below to read one). John Newbery produced the first Pretty Little Pocket Book in 1744 as a book for children. Nearly two hundred years later, a publisher adopted the name,
Pocket Books and is now a division of
Simon & Schuster.
Imitating the original Pocket Books, Pocket produced mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America in early
1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry. The German
Albatross Books had pioneered the idea of a line of color-coded paperback editions in
1931 under
Kurt Enoch;
Penguin Books in England had refined the idea in
1935 and had one million books in print by the following year.
Penguin's success inspired entrepreneur
Robert de Graff, who partnered with publishers Simon & Schuster to bring it to the American market. Priced at 25 cents and featuring the logo of Gertrude the
kangaroo (named after the artist's mother-in-law), Pocket Books' editorial policy of reprints of light literature, popular non-fiction and mysteries was coordinated with its strategy of selling books outside the traditional distribution channels. The format size, and the fact that the books were glued rather than stitched, were cost-cutting innovations.
The first ten titles from Simon and Shuster's Pocket Books include:
* #1,
Lost Horizon by
James Hilton* #2,
Wake Up and Live by Dorothea Brande
* #3,
Five Great Tragedies by
William Shakespeare* #4,
Topper by
Thorne Smith* #5,
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by
Agatha Christie* #6,
Enough Rope... by
Dorothy Parker* #7,
Wuthering Heights by
Emily Bronte* #8,
The Way of All Flesh by
Samuel Butler* #9,
The Bridge at San Luis Rey by
Thornton Wilder* #10,
Bambi by Felix Salter
The edition of
Wuthering Heights hit the best-seller list, and by the end of the first year Pocket Books had sold more than 1.5 million units. Robert de Graff continued to refine his selections with movie tie-ins and greater emphasis on mystery novels, particularly those of Christie and
Erle Stanley Gardner.
Pocket thrived during
World War II because material shortages worked to their advantage. During the war Pocket sued
Avon Books for copyright infringement; among other issues, a New York state court found Pocket did not have an exclusive right to the pocket-sized format. (Both Pocket and Avon published paperback editions of
Leslie Charteris's
The Saint mystery series, among others.)
Pocket is still known for publishing works of popular fiction based on movies or TV series, such as the
Star Trek franchise and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The author credited for one of the Buffy products is "Gertrude Pocket", a reference to the company's kangaroo logo. Since first obtaining the Star Trek licence from
Bantam Books in 1980 (with a publication of the novelization of
Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Pocket has published hundreds of original and adapted works based upon the franchise.
*
Pocket Books*
Pretty Little Pocket Book from 1787 See the first pocket book. Free to read, full text search.
*
A history of the paperback
