Paperbacks
When Pocket Books introduced the paperback to American consumers in 1939, book publishing changed forever. Paperbacks did more than make books affordable to a mass audience; they made books available to readers who did not live near book stores, they helped popularize genre fiction, they turned otherwise obscure writers into best-selling authors, and they ensured a lasting existence for hardback books that went into paperback.
Although there had been many earlier attempts to publish books with paper covers, the modern paperback book can be traced to Tauchnitz Books, a German publisher who began issuing paperbound books in 1841. Tauchnitz published English language editions of American and English books, primarily in non-English speaking European countries, assuming that there were enough American and British expatriates as well as Europeans fluent in English to establish a market for inexpensive English language books on the continent. Tauchnitz attempted to publish only the best literature and voluntarily paid royalties to its English and American writers at a time when most European publishers did not, so it was both flattering and financially rewarding to be chosen for publication by Tauchnitz. Perhaps what is most striking about Tauchnitz books is their complete lack of color or decoration; in contrast with American paperbacks, Tauchnitz book covers carried no illustration, only bearing the title and author in black letters against an off-white background.
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