mass-market
The term "mass market" refers to a market for goods produced on a large scale for a significant number of end consumers. The mass market differs from the niche market in that the former focuses on consumers with a wide variety of backgrounds wit ...
, pocket-sized paperback books in the United States 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
Kurt Enoch (22 November 1895 – 15 February 1982) was a German-born publisher who co-founded Albatross Books in Germany and Penguin Books Inc. and New American Library in the United States, bringing high-quality paperback fiction and non-ficti ...
Leon Shimkin
Leon Shimkin (April 7, 1907 – May 25, 1988) was an American businessman who helped to build Simon & Schuster into a major publishing company. Shimkin was responsible for many self-help bestsellers turning Dale Carnegie's lectures into t ...
, partners of Simon & Schuster, along with Robert de Graff.
In 1944, the founding owners sold the company to Marshall Field III, owner of the ''
Chicago Sun
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the '' Chicago ...
'' newspaper. Following Field's death, in 1957, Leon Shimkin, a Simon & Schuster partner, and James M. Jacobson bought Pocket Books for $5 million. Simon & Schuster acquired Pocket in 1966.
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 mother-in-law of the artist, Frank Lieberman), 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 numbered Pocket Book titles published in 1939 with a print run of about 10,000 copies each:
# '' Lost Horizon'' by James Hilton
# ''
Wake Up and Live
Wake or The Wake may refer to:
Culture
*Wake (ceremony), a ritual which takes place during some funeral ceremonies
*Wakes week, an English holiday tradition
*Parish Wake, another name of the Welsh ', the fairs held on the local parish's patron sa ...
Wuthering Heights
''Wuthering Heights'' is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under her pen name Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent re ...
Bambi
''Bambi'' is a 1942 American animated drama film directed by David Hand (supervising a team of sequence directors), produced by Walt Disney and based on the 1923 book ''Bambi, a Life in the Woods'' by Austrian author and hunter Felix Salten ...
'' by
Felix Salten
Felix Salten (; 6 September 1869 – 8 October 1945) was an Austro-Hungarian author and literary critic in Vienna.
Life and death
Salten was born Siegmund Salzmann on 6 September 1869 in Pest, Austria-Hungary. His father was Fülöp Salzmann, t ...
The edition of ''Wuthering Heights'' hit the bestseller 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
Erle Stanley Gardner (July 17, 1889 – March 11, 1970) was an American lawyer and author. He is best known for the Perry Mason series of detective stories, but he wrote numerous other novels and shorter pieces and also a series of nonfiction b ...
.
Pocket and its imitators thrived during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
because material shortages worked to their advantage. During the war, Pocket sued
Avon Books
Avon Publications is one of the leading publishers of romance fiction. At Avon's initial stages, it was an American paperback book and comic book publisher. The shift in content occurred in the early 1970s with multiple Avon romance titles rea ...
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
Leslie Charteris (born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, 12 May 1907 – 15 April 1993), was a British-Chinese author of adventure fiction, as well as a screenwriter.The Saint'' mystery series, among others).
Phyllis E. Grann who would later become the first woman CEO of a major publishing firm was promoted to run Pocket Books under then CEO Richard E. Snyder. Grann left for Putnam in 1976.
In 1981, Dr. Benjamin Spock's '' Baby and Child Care'' was listed as their top seller, having sold 28 million copies at that time and having been acquired in 1946.
In 1989, ''The Dieter'' by Susan Sussman became the first hardcover published by Pocket Books.
Pocket was for many years known for publishing works of popular fiction based on movies or TV series, such as the '' Star Trek'' franchise (owned by corporate siblings CBS Television Studios and Paramount Pictures). Since first obtaining the ''Star Trek'' license from Bantam Books in 1979 (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 and continues to publish a new novel every month. Beginning in 2017 with novels based on '' Star Trek: Discovery'', the Star Trek novel lines have gradually moved to Simon & Schuster's
Gallery Books
Gallery Publishing Group is a general interest publisher and a division of Simon & Schuster which houses the imprints Gallery Books, Pocket Books, Scout Press, Gallery 13, and Saga Press.
Jen Bergstrom is the Senior Vice President and Publisher. ...
line.
Pocket also previously published novels based on '' Buffy the Vampire Slayer''. The author credited for one of the Buffy products is Gertrude Pocket, a reference to the company's kangaroo logo. (The Buffy novels are now published by
Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest pub ...
, another division of Simon & Schuster.) Pocket Books is also the division that currently owns publication rights to the well-known work of James O'Barr, '' The Crow''.
Imprints
*
Baen Books
Baen Books () is an American publishing house for science fiction and fantasy. In science fiction, it emphasizes space opera, hard science fiction, and military science fiction. The company was established in 1983 by science fiction publisher an ...
Threshold Editions
Threshold Editions is an imprint of publishers Simon & Schuster, a division of ViacomCBS, specializing in conservative non-fiction. The publisher is Louise Burke; Mary Matalin was its founding editor-in-chief.
Threshold Editions was founded to ...
—
conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
titles
*
WWE
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., d/b/a as WWE, is an American professional wrestling promotion. A global integrated media and entertainment company, WWE has also branched out into other fields, including film, American football, and vari ...
Books
Defunct imprints
* Sonnet—romance
*
Timescape
''Timescape'' is a 1980 science fiction novel by American writer Gregory Benford (with unbilled co-author Hilary Foister, Benford's sister-in-law, who is credited as having "contributed significantly to the manuscript"). It won the 1981 Nebula an ...