Comics, Pulps, and Paperbacks: Why such a discrepancy in values? 25 25

[Westy Steve]

Hey guys.  Did the paper drives of WW II     have much of an effect on the scarcity of paperback books during that era compared to afterward?   Most of the books would have been relatively new, so I can see an argument against it. 

[PopKulture]

17 hours ago, Robot Man said:

Quite the Avon PB collection Don!  Avon, overall is probably my favorite publisher of PB covers.

Thanks, Robot Man! Avon's are near and dear to my heart as well. On any given day, they're my number one also, but Popular Library's are always lurking right around the corner. 

[PopKulture]

4 hours ago, Westy Steve said:

Hey guys.  Did the paper drives of WW II     have much of an effect on the scarcity of paperback books during that era compared to afterward?   Most of the books would have been relatively new, so I can see an argument against it. 

I'm not sure we have much besides anecdotal evidence at this point, but I surmise you are mostly correct. I don't think as many paperbacks hit the scrap heaps as comics or pulps: they're books, after all, and henceforth literature and more worthy of saving than more "childish" or disposable fiction such as the pulps. 

[Surfing Alien]

1 hour ago, PopKulture said:

I'm not sure we have much besides anecdotal evidence at this point

I don’t think the paper drives have as much to do with scarcity as the fact that the paperback was designed to be disposable. They were passed around, read to death and often thrown away.

I’ve only done cursory research into the print runs in the 40’s and 50’s  but from what I’ve read, the average print run of a major publisher paperback was around 200,000 and for the popular authors, it could end up being a million with multiple print runs.  This is likely why you’ll see so many Erle Stanley Gardeners and Ellery Queens compared to a lesser known author.

Pretty much all the major publisher titles are always available somewhere, albeit maybe in well read condition. The real crux on paperbacks, like all collectibles, is condition. If you actually open a paperback to read it, in the non-preservation sense that people did back then, that cardboard cover cracks at the spine and you have the ubiquitous “reader’s crease”. No one was carefully reading them with the covers half-open to preserve their condition. If they got passed around they were completely trashed.

Unread copies with no readers crease and minimal corner creasing and spine wear are (generally, there are exceptions) the only objects of scarcity imho. This is especially true when combined with lesser known authors, early books of writers who later became popular, or the smaller imprints that must have had smaller print runs.

There’s also a whole subset of books that were cheaply printed that makes high grade difficult. Uni-Books with their thin paper stock covers is an example.  The Uni-Books 1^st edition of Marijuana Girl is an example of a book that combines it all – small imprint, obscure author, thin paper cover & high demand because of the genre and “cult classic” cover of a stoned out girl smoking in her nightie. If you want any copy you’re likely going to have to pony up at least a couple hundred bucks. I know I did after hoping for 30 years that I’d luck into one for $2 in a flea market or thrift shop lol. I was lucky to get one in pretty amazing condition for the title, those paper covers tear if you breathe on them.

This is just what I get a “sense” of from poking around with these things since the 80’s.

[Sarg]

17 hours ago, Surfing Alien said:

There’s also a whole subset of books that were cheaply printed that makes high grade difficult. Uni-Books with their thin paper stock covers is an example.  The Uni-Books 1^st edition of Marijuana Girl is an example of a book that combines it all – small imprint, obscure author, thin paper cover & high demand because of the genre and “cult classic” cover of a stoned out girl smoking in her nightie. If you want any copy you’re likely going to have to pony up at least a couple hundred bucks. I know I did after hoping for 30 years that I’d luck into one for $2 in a flea market or thrift shop lol. I was lucky to get one in pretty amazing condition for the title, those paper covers tear if you breathe on them.

This is just what I get a “sense” of from poking around with these things since the 80’s.

 

"Marijuana Girl" was also one of the few specific paperbacks singled out for abuse by the Congressional Subcommittee on "Pornography" in 1952. But I've seen no evidence that book collectors think that such attention is something that adds interest and value to a book, unlike comic collectors, who have always been interested in the 1954 Congressional hearings on comic books, and the specific issues discussed there. 

[pmpknface]

Because of an above post, I had no choice but to pick up this one:

 

Merry Christmas to me!   

[pmpknface]

Oh, and this one arrived the other day as well.  It's a bit wider than a standard pulp and a bit thinner.  Just had to have it!  

[Bookery]

On 12/16/2019 at 9:07 AM, Westy Steve said:

Hey guys.  Did the paper drives of WW II     have much of an effect on the scarcity of paperback books during that era compared to afterward?   Most of the books would have been relatively new, so I can see an argument against it. 

I doubt it had much.  I think because of the thicker bindings, slick covers, glued spines, lamination, etc., they were probably not considered good candidates for paper drives (too much work to pulp them).  My father (born in 1934) recalls one of the major paper drives in his town.  All kids were expected to do their part.  He was made to take his comic books (hauled in a little red wagon) down to the high school where the drive was held.  He said the school gymnasium was filled several feet high with row after row of paper.  This would primarily be newspapers, but there were also thousands of comics and magazines (he remembers being disappointed when he wasn't allowed to trade his comics for issues he hadn't read!).  He didn't mention any books, and since he eventually became a rare book dealer, it would likely be something he'd remember.  (On a side note... a comic book like Action #1 would have only been 5 or 6 years old at the time... there would have likely have been dozens of copies in that gym!).

[Surfing Alien]

2 hours ago, Sarg said:

But I've seen no evidence that book collectors think that such attention is something that adds interest and value to a book

Likely because the market is so fractured. IIRC, the major catalogues like Warren & Hancer's didn't have blurbs describing these historical notes like Overstreet does for SOTI comics. For whatever its faults are, Overstreet's yearly production created a knowledge base that was consistently updated throughout the years with more of this type of information. I'm sure that collective knowledge was a huge driver in genre collecting.

[Surfing Alien]

14 minutes ago, Bookery said:

He was made to take his comic books (hauled in a little red wagon) down to the high school where the drive was held.  He said the school gymnasium was filled several feet high with row after row of paper.  This would primarily be newspapers, but there were also thousands of comics and magazines (he remembers being disappointed when he wasn't allowed to trade his comics for issues he hadn't read!).  He didn't mention any books, and since he eventually became a rare book dealer, it would likely be something he'd remember.  (On a side note... a comic book like Action #1 would have only been 5 or 6 years old at the time... there would have likely have been dozens of copies in that gym!).

That is a sad picture (both your dad hauling his little wagon of books and the Action #1's tossed in the pile) 

I agree with your point about the construction of the paperbacks not being conducive to recycling. Also consider that, although we cherish a lot of the "trashy" stuff for their covers, the vast majority of paperbacks were literature and bestsellers that were licensed by hardback publishers to the paperback publishers. The paperback revolution was a revolution in popular literacy, really the internet of the mid 20th century. Hardback books were printed in numbers in the low thousands for the most part and priced at $2-3. Book ownership to a large degree was for the wealthy. A 25 cent Pocket Book brought a vast swath of knowledge & literacy to the masses, so they may have been valued somewhat above newspapers and comics although It's hard to imagine where the old paperbacks all ended up. 

Hundreds of millions of them were printed in total and they're not all on Ebay lol. They were most likely thrown away after being passed around to different readers. This is all speculation - other than the facts that so many were printed and they haven't all survived. 

[Foley]

Hey guys  Long time thread lurker, but have a question I'm hoping someone here can help with.

I'm looking for a cover gallery or checklist of some sort for the "Quarter Books" novels and am having a hard time. All my searches get overwhelmed with those books for collecting numismatic quarters 

Even if I add key words like "paperback", "romance" and "sleaze", I still end up with a bunch of junk results.

Are there any good online resources for Quarter Books, and vintage paperbacks of this sort in general.

Any help is appreciated!

[Bookery]

19 minutes ago, Foley said:

Hey guys  Long time thread lurker, but have a question I'm hoping someone here can help with.

I'm looking for a cover gallery or checklist of some sort for the "Quarter Books" novels and am having a hard time. All my searches get overwhelmed with those books for collecting numismatic quarters 

Even if I add key words like "paperback", "romance" and "sleaze", I still end up with a bunch of junk results.

Are there any good online resources for Quarter Books, and vintage paperbacks of this sort in general.

Any help is appreciated!

Check out bookscans.com.  They are listed in a subsection at the bottom of the page titled "sexy digests".

[Get Marwood & I]

38 minutes ago, Foley said:

Hey guys  Long time thread lurker, but have a question I'm hoping someone here can help with.

I'm looking for a cover gallery or checklist of some sort for the "Quarter Books" novels and am having a hard time. All my searches get overwhelmed with those books for collecting numismatic quarters 

Even if I add key words like "paperback", "romance" and "sleaze", I still end up with a bunch of junk results.

Are there any good online resources for Quarter Books, and vintage paperbacks of this sort in general.

Any help is appreciated!

If you search ebay in inverted commas, i.e. "quarter books" that narrows the field Ryan:

[Surfing Alien]

2 hours ago, Foley said:

"Quarter Books" novels

Welcome! & share some if you will  Quarter Books is a favorite title - another one with paper thin covers that make high grade very hard to come by. I've shared this one before but it's worth another look...

[Westy Steve]

New pick up. Scruffy, but it was cheap!

[Robot Man]

5 hours ago, Westy Steve said:

New pick up. Scruffy, but it was cheap!

"Scruffy"??? Looks nice to me. Great cover on that one. Better stop showing such cool books or I might be forced into collecting them again...

[Westy Steve]

Thanks. Hey, feel free to collect what I show off because I’ll already have mine by then, right?   🙂  I am guilty of a shopping spree and my attempts at keeping a low profile are failing 

FWIW, the book collector’s grading system is definitely different than comic grading.  They seem to fixate more in specific kinds of errors rather than the overall presentation of the book.  A pristine book with a small tear in the wrong place is harshly downgraded.  And they don’t have many grades.  But it seems the online marketplace pays more attention to appearance like comic collectors.  The systems don’t seem to mesh perfectly. 

[moonpool]

6 hours ago, Westy Steve said:

Thanks. Hey, feel free to collect what I show off because I’ll already have mine by then, right?   🙂  I am guilty of a shopping spree and my attempts at keeping a low profile are failing 

 

I'm pretty sure we can replace Dodgson with paperbacks.

 

[Westy Steve]

19 minutes ago, moonpool said:

I'm pretty sure we can replace Dodgson with paperbacks.

 

Probably. Pardon my paranoia, but the last three things I tried to collect exploded after I only got a few items. I want to enjoy collecting good rare stuff without spending an arm and a leg. Collecting these books makes me feel like the old-time golden age comic book collectors must’ve felt. It’s liberating.

[Surfing Alien]

15 hours ago, Robot Man said:

"Scruffy"??? Looks nice to me. Great cover on that one. Better stop showing such cool books or I might be forced into collecting them again...

I agree, that's better than most of these i've seen. Just like with comics, the dark covers show creasing more easily. The "readers crease" on this one doesn't bother me so much since the rest of the cover is pretty clean and the awesome Maguire main image is un-marred. I do gotta get me one of these as I do not currently have one