The Revolutionary Effect of the Paperback Book
This simple innovation transformed the reading habits of an entire nation
- By Clive Thompson
- Illustration by Alanna Cavanagh
- Smithsonian magazine, May 2013, Subscribe
The iPhone became the world’s best-selling smartphone partly because Steve Jobs was obsessed with the ergonomics of everyday life. If you want people to carry a computer, it had to hit the “sweet spot” where it was big enough to display “detailed, legible graphics, but small enough to fit comfortably in the hand and pocket.”
Seventy-five years ago, another American innovator had the same epiphany: Robert Fair de Graff realized he could change the way people read by making books radically smaller. Back then, it was surprisingly hard for ordinary Americans to get good novels and nonfiction. The country only had about 500 bookstores, all clustered in the biggest 12 cities, and hardcovers cost $2.50 (about $40 in today’s currency).
De Graff revolutionized that market when he got backing from Simon & Schuster to launch Pocket Books in May 1939. A petite 4 by 6 inches and priced at a mere 25 cents, the Pocket Book changed everything about who could read and where. Suddenly people read all the time, much as we now peek at e-mail and Twitter on our phones. And by working with the often gangster-riddled magazine-distribution industry, De Graff sold books where they had never been available before—grocery stores, drugstores and airport terminals. Within two years he’d sold 17 million.
“They literally couldn’t keep up with demand,” says historian Kenneth C. Davis, who documented De Graff’s triumph in his book Two-Bit Culture. “They tapped into a huge reservoir of Americans who nobody realized wanted to read.”
Other publishers rushed into the business. And, like all forms of new media, pocket-size books panicked the elites. Sure, some books were quality literature, but the biggest sellers were mysteries, westerns, thinly veiled smut—a potential “flood of trash” that threatened to “debase farther the popular taste,” as the social critic Harvey Swados worried. But the tumult also gave birth to new and distinctly American literary genres, from Mickey Spillane’s gritty detective stories to Ray Bradbury’s cerebral science fiction.
The financial success of the paperback became its cultural downfall. Media conglomerates bought the upstart pocket-book firms and began hiking prices and chasing after quick-money best-sellers, including jokey fare like 101 Uses for a Dead Cat. And while paperbacks remain commonplace, they’re no longer dizzingly cheaper than hardcovers.
Instead, there’s a new reading format that’s shifting the terrain. Mini-tablets and e-readers not only fit in your pocket; they allow your entire library to fit in your pocket. And, as with De Graff’s invention, e-readers are producing new forms, prices and publishers.
The upshot, says Mike Shatzkin—CEO of the Idea Logical Company, a consultancy for publishers—is that “more reading is taking place,” as we tuck it into ever more stray moments. But he also worries that as e-book consumers shift more to multifunctional tablets, reading might take a back seat to other portable entertainment: more “Angry Birds,” less Jennifer Egan. Still, whatever the outcome, the true revolution in portable publishing began not with e-books but with De Graff, whose paperback made reading into an activity that travels everywhere.
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Comments (12)
Why must the intelligentsia always haul out Bradbury when they want to name an iconic science fiction writer? He's a second-tier writer with a talent for self-promotion. He wasn't that early into the genre - according to Wikipedia, several true icons were his inspiration: "When he was seventeen, Bradbury read stories published in Astounding Science Fiction, and said he read everything by Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and the early writings of Theodore Sturgeon and A. E. van Vogt, but cited H. G. Wells and Jules Verne as his big science fiction influences." All of those are far more iconic than Bradbury. So are Philip K. Dick, John Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Harry Harrison, and E.E. "Doc" Smith. So could you lit grads who look down your nose at science fiction (except, of course, for the boring and pretentious Fahrenheit 451) possibly educate yourselves before writing about it? And give Bradbury a rest. In terms of output and influence, he's way at the back of the pack. If you want to sound like you know what you're talking about, use Heinlein, Clarke, Sturgeon, or Asimov as your iconic example.
Posted by Billy Hollis on May 12,2013 | 12:08 PM
Didn't Sir Allen Lane's Penguin books come first (1935)?
Posted by Crusader79 on May 8,2013 | 10:36 PM
Others have already pointed out the inaccuracy of your (central) claim that someone "invented" paperback books a mere 75 years ago. I just want to add that sci-fi is not a "distinctly American genre". Ever read A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder? The Time Machine? They, too, far predate your example.
Posted by MW on May 3,2013 | 01:24 PM
Also, most department stores had book departments, and most small cities had department stores. I think books were far more widely available in the 1930s than Mr. Thompson seems to think.
Posted by PapayaSF on April 29,2013 | 03:25 PM
The country only had about 500 bookstores, all clustered in the biggest 12 cities This is hard for me to believe, and incorrect on at least one point: in 1940 Cincinnati was the 17th largest city in the US, and had the James Book Store, which was started in 1831 and lasted through the 1980s, at least.
Posted by PapayaSF on April 26,2013 | 02:11 PM
Erm... chapbooks?
Posted by Laura on April 26,2013 | 12:02 PM
As near as I can tell Robert Fair de Graff just dusted off a popular mid-19th century size for books (Decimo-octavo) and slapped a paper cover on it. I own well over a dozen Pocket Book sized volumes in my library printed between 1830 and 1860. Additionally, in my mispent youth I photocopied a full edition of James's History of the Royal Navy (six volumes) from a set of books that sized which were printed in 1859. (They were about 120 years old then, so it was like getting a book printed in 1901 today.) Not that it was a bad idea. I suspect it was the same reason the size was relatively popular a century earlier. The books were convenient to carry and low price. (Almost all of mine are ex-library books from private lending libraries.)
Posted by Mark L on April 26,2013 | 07:47 AM
don't forget Scifi, preppie handbook and duct tape books!
Posted by joemack on April 25,2013 | 01:54 AM
I worked at F W Woolworth as an assistant manager and I remember the paper backs were on consignment. The publisher would send out a list of book covers to return for credit and you destroyed the book. Of course I took many of they home; waste not , want not.
Posted by Jerry Manriquez on April 25,2013 | 09:39 PM
Minor quibble. Bradbury was a very humanistic science fiction writer, not cerebral. Robert Heinlein to some extent and even more so Philip K. Dick would be considered as cerebral.
Posted by Astro on April 25,2013 | 09:21 PM
It seems to me that cheap novels were around long before de Graff.
Posted by William Hamblen on April 25,2013 | 09:06 PM
1939? Who knew?
Posted by Katherine on April 25,2013 | 08:47 PM