Word: paperbacked
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...literally a day for the books. In addition to the Puzo package, Koster was chasing rights to publish works by Franz Kafka. She was outbid by Pocket Books, who paid $210,000. The Prague pension clerk would have been fascinated by the rituals of a modern paperback auction. He had envisioned the adrenal new world in his novel Amerika. But could he have imagined that he would be in six figures...
Nevertheless, the ever watchful godfather of The Godfather never missed a shuffle of the paperback poker game: "While I was playing tennis it was up to 1.6, something like that. Then after dinner it was 1.8. It was Ballantine, N.A.L., and up to 1.5 Bantam was in it. The last three were Pocket Books, Ballantine, N.A.L. Then at 9 o'clock I got a phone call. Ballantine and N.A.L. were up to 2.4. Then I got a final call saying that Ballantine and N.A.L. were at 2.5 and 2.55, and if it was O.K. with me, we'd take...
Such fast action was unheard of 40 years ago when the modern paperback business was born. Potboiler westerns, mysteries and a few novels were sold mainly in drugstores and on newsstands. The 1950s saw the emergence of "trade" or "quality" paperbacks. They were the inexpensive, soft-covered reprints of classics, serious novels and texts that heralded the so-called paperback revolution. Readership climbed steadily with the growth of the college-educated population. Last year's industry figures indicate that more than 530 million paperbacks were sold, between 60% and 80% bought by women mainly...
...years before high-powered auctions, hard-cover houses would circulate manuscripts to their friends in the paperback business. Back would come sealed bids, with the rights going to the highest offer in a one-round competition. In 1957, for example, Fawcett paid $100,000 for rights to James Gould Cozzens' novel of emotional middle-age spread, By Love Possessed. Four years later the same house paid $400,000 for William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich...
...case of sour grappa? Possibly. The figures paid for books are impressive, but to recoup a multimillion-dollar investment today, paperback publishers must tout their products like new cars. Record-sale publicity is one way. And, of course, there are gimmicks and advertising blitzes for the soon-to-be-made-into-a-major-motion-picture that augment the hard-sell paperback commercials on radio...