Of course, once the war was over millions of veterans returned home with an insatiable appetite for reading. Their stories of home helped ease the servicemen’s loneliness and homesickness, and they could be easily carried in uniform pockets and read anywhere-in fox holes, barracks, transport planes, etc. These books were often passed from one soldier or sailor to another, being read and re-read over and over again until they literally fell apart. During the war, a landmark agreement was reached with the government in which paperbound books would be produced at a very low price for distribution to service men and women overseas. World War II proved to be a boon to the emerging paperback industry. The popular genres reflected the tastes of Americans during World War II-mysteries, thrillers, and “hardboiled detective” stories were all the rage. Pocket Books was joined by Avon in 1941, Popular Library in 1942, and Dell in 1943.
Traditional publishers, salivating at the opportunity to cash in on the phenomenal success of the new paperback revolution, soon launched their own paperback ventures. The American public could not get enough of them, and before long the publishing industry began to take notice of Pocket Book’s astonishing success. These books were cheaply produced and sold in numbers never before seen, in large part due to a bold and innovative distribution model that soon after made Pocket Books available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops. In 1939 a new publishing company-Pocket Books-stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.Ī new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America-a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and how people would purchase and read them. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
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