paperback book

…was a 20th-century pioneer of paperback publishing in England. His belief in a market for high-quality books at low prices helped to create a new reading public and also led to improved printing and binding techniques.

…a well-designed series of inexpensive paperbacks, both worthwhile reprints and new titles, could succeed both commercially and intellectually. They did much to bring about the paperback revolution that swept both the Continent and the United States in the period that followed World War II.

The paperbound format proved successful not only for the mass marketing of books but also from the 1950s for books of less general appeal. After World War II, an increase in use of colour illustration, particularly in children’s books and textbooks, was an obvious trend, facilitated…

The introduction of the mass-produced paperback book in the late 1930s made detective-story writers wealthy, among them the Americans Erle Stanley Gardner, whose criminal lawyer Perry Mason unraveled crimes in court; Rex Stout, with his fat, orchid-raising detective Nero Wolfe and his urbane assistant Archie Goodwin; and Frances

…can buy the novel in paper covers for less than its original price. This edition of a novel has become, for the vast majority of fiction readers, the form in which they first meet it, and the novelist who does not achieve paperback publication is missing a vast potential audience.…

…fiction was frequently sold as paperback books, which had become a profitable trade owing to advances in printing. As new media technologies fueled the growth of the entertainment industry, best-selling books became fertile fodder for film and television adaptations. At the same time, a distinction widened between popular fiction and…