Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
From The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...ngle_page=true
A little known chapter in the paperback revolution:
Paperbacks were available but the major publishing houses feared and despised the format. And they were limited to backlist reprints and popular fiction. Kinda like ebooks today.
The war giveaway expanded the market for all kinds of books and everybody prospered... until the multinationals took over in the 80's.
More at the source. |
Of course, there are other economic and social reasons why hard backs were the norm for certain types of books and why book sales in general were much lower prior to WW II that had nothing to do with a "fear factor" or vast conspiracy by the major publishers. One would also note that there were a lot more publishers back then.
Rather obviously, you had the Great Depression from 1929 to 1941, which meant that many had very little excess funds to buy books. In addition, most people had a lot less living space, houses were smaller and many people lived in one room apartments or boarding rooms, especially in urban areas where the book stores were. Book stores were not terribly common once you went outside the big cities.
Paper back books normally were a lot less durable than hard back books, so they were focused mostly on what one could think of as throw away books, i.e. the penny dreadfuls from the turn of the century or the bus station paper backs from the 30's. In a way, paper back books of the time period were much more like the comic books from the 60's when I was a kid. I'm talking about how they were used and perceived by the general public, rather than the actual content. The major buyers of books were libraries and the affluent collectors, both of which wanted the hard back books that were both more durable and had better workmanship.