Word: bantams
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...major publisher reports a 400% jump in its teen paperback titles since 1980. Throughout the industry, sales have tripled, bringing a touch of cheer to the financially ailing book trade. Y.A. are even available in lightly spiced series, such as Wildfire (Scholastic) and Sweet Dreams (Bantam), that feature adolescent romances like Saturday Night Date and I've Got a Crush on You. Many heroines in these confections never get to the first kiss. For boys there are thrillers like Your Code Name Is Jonah in Bantam's Choose Your Own Adventure series. These are not traditional adventure narratives...
...cutbacks are just beginning. Says Louis Wolfe, president of Bantam, the largest U.S. paperback house: "We're paying more attention to what we pay up front and with good reason. We can't afford a lot of money for what might be a big book and then find out it isn't. We have to have a bottom-line profit, and we can no longer afford to keep some of the hard-cover publishing houses going." Shatzkin is less sanguine: "There will definitely be failures among the original trade publishers...
...once profitable) interval between hard-and soft-cover editions may be a thing of the past. Traditionalists like Random House have begun issuing simultaneous clothbound and paperback editions. Nobody's Angel, by picaresque Novelist Thomas McGuane, is being issued with 5,000 Papas and 30,000 Mamas. Bantam, Ballantine and Pocket Books, three major mass-market houses, shortcut the hard-cover publishers with their own original titles. Jerzy Kosinski's just published Pinball is appearing as a Bantam Papa (5,000), Mama (150,000), with babies yet to be determined. Says Stuart Applebaum, director of publicity for Bantam...
...risks of publishing first novels, new nonfiction and, perhaps, poetry from the ailing old houses. Says Richard Snyder, president of Simon & Schuster: "The fact is, the mass-market publishers are making things more accessible, not less. There are books in homes that never had books before." And Bantam President Wolfe believes the worst of times is actually the best of times: "I can't stand this gloom and doom. This is an exciting and growing business. There is room for all types of publishers in all types of categories." Maybe, but that room seems to be rapidly filling...
...publishing circles, the cubists are hotter than Harold Robbins. With 6 million copies in print, The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube, a 64-page booklet written by Stanford Chemist James Nourse, has become the fastest-selling title in the history of Bantam Books, outpacing Jaws and Valley of the Dolls. Buoyed by the acute aggravation of frustrated cube twiddlers, Nourse's book has topped bestseller lists in the U.S. and around the world from New Zealand to Nigeria. Says John May, managing director of George's Booksellers in Bristol, England: "The cube phenomenon is the biggest...