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Ace Books

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Ace Books is the oldest continuing publisher of science fiction and fantasy novels, founded in 1952 by magazine publisher A. A. Wyn. It was originally a genre publisher, starting with mysteries and westerns, but soon branched out into science fiction, non-fiction, gothic novels, romances, and other genres. It became well-known for the dos-a-dos format used for the great majority of its early books, although it did not originate the format. By the end of the fifties Ace was a prolific and successful paperback publisher.

With the death of owner A. A. Wyn in 1967, Ace's fortunes began to decline. Two prominent editors, Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr left in 1971, and in 1972 it was sold to Grosset & Dunlap. Further mergers and acquisitions ultimately resulted in Ace becoming a part of Berkley Books, and Ace is now a paperback imprint of Penguin Group (USA). The editorial team at Ace is the same team that edits the Roc imprint, although the two imprints maintain a separate identity.

Contents

Founding and Ace Double concept

Ace Double D-36, Robert E. Howard's Conan the Conqueror. The novel on the reverse side was Leigh Brackett's The Sword of Rhiannon.
Ace Double D-36, Robert E. Howard's Conan the Conqueror. The novel on the reverse side was Leigh Brackett's The Sword of Rhiannon.
In 1952 Donald A. Wollheim was working at Avon Books, and while looking for other jobs (he intensely disliked working at Avon) he got the idea of trying to persuade A. A. Wyn to found a new paperback publishing company. Wyn was a well-established publisher. He published books and pulp magazines under the name A. A. Wyn's Magazine Publishers; the magazines included Ace Mystery and Ace Sports, and it is perhaps from these that Ace Books drew its name.  Wyn liked the idea, but delayed several months, and in the meantime Wollheim applied for other jobs, including an assistant editorship post at Pyramid Books.  Pyramid mistakenly called Rose Wyn (A. A. Wyn's wife) for a reference, thinking Wollheim had worked for her.  When Rose Wyn told her husband that Wollheim was applying for another job, Wyn made up his mind to take the plunge and hired Wollheim immediately as an editor.
The first book published by Ace was a pair of mysteries in dos-a-dos format: Keith Vining's Too Hot For Hell backed with Samuel W. Taylor's The Grinning Gismo, priced at 35 cents, with serial number D-01. A dos-a-dos book has the two titles bound upside-down with respect to one another, so that there are two front covers and the two texts meet in the middle (perhaps with some advertising pages in between). This format has been generally regarded as an innovation of Ace's; for example, James Corrick (the author of a reference work on Ace Doubles) quotes the October 18, 1952 issue of Publisher's Weekly as noting that although previous books had been published dos-a-dos, Ace was the first to put different authors in the same volume in this format. The format itself was certainly not Ace's invention—there had long been devotional books bound dos-a-dos— but in fact there had also been earlier examples of books by different authors bound in this way. For example, Irvin S. Cobb's Oh! Well! You Know How Women Are! bound dos-a-dos with Mary Roberts Rinehart's Isn't That Just Like A Man!, was published by George Doran in 1920.Copy description located in second-hand bookstore However, Ace published hundreds of titles bound in this way over the next twenty years, and became much the best known publishers of the format. Books by established authors were often bound together with those by less well-known ones, the theory being that this would help the more obscure authors gain popularity in their own right. The main drawback to the Doubles format was that the two books had to fit a fixed page length (usually totalling between 256 and 320 low-height pages), so that one or both would often be cut to fit. The statement "Complete and Unabridged" on the cover was not a guarantee, as many books labelled thus were in fact cut significantly.

The last Ace double in dos-a-dos format was Mack Reynolds' The Rival Rigelians, bound with his Planetary Agent X, released in September 1973. After that date, although Ace did release books contain two novels under one cover, they were not printed dos-a-dos. They had a front and back cover, and both novels were printed the same way up. It was not until 1978 that Ace finally stopped releasing books in this more conventional format. All told, Ace published nearly 650 Ace Doubles, of which over 600 were in dos-a-dos format.

Genres in the fifties and sixties

Genre distribution for the first seventeen years of Ace's existence. As can be seen from the graph, science fiction overtook the other two main genres by the mid-fifties, and was by far the dominant genre published in the sixties.
Genre distribution for the first seventeen years of Ace's existence. As can be seen from the graph, science fiction overtook the other two main genres by the mid-fifties, and was by far the dominant genre published in the sixties.
The second title, also dos-a-dos, was a western: William Colt MacDonald's Bad Man's Return, bound with J. Edward Leithead's Bloody Hoofs.  Mysteries and westerns alternated, more or less regularly, for the first thirty titles, with a couple of books not in either genre such as P. G. Wodehouse's Quick Service, bound with his The Code of the Woosters.  In 1953, A.E. van Vogt's The World of Null-A, bound with his The Universe Maker, appeared; this was Ace's first science fiction title.  Earlier in 1953, Ace released Theodore S. Drachman's Cry Plague!, with a plot that could be regarded as sf, but the book it was bound with (Leslie Edgley's The Judas Goat) was not sf, and so the van Vogt is generally regarded as Ace's first foray into the genre.  Another sf Ace Double followed later that year, and sf was rapidly established alongside westerns and mysteries as a regular part of Ace's output.  By 1955 there were more sf titles released each year than in either of the other two genres, and from 1961 onwards the sf titles outnumbered the mysteries and westerns combined.


The very next book after the van Vogt double was another first: Dorothy Malone's Cookbook for Beginners (1953) was the first Ace book that was not in dos-a-dos format.  Single novels began to appear frequently from 1954 on, and were initially used mainly for books not in Ace's main three genres, though the occasional sf, mystery or western title did appear in single format.  By the sixties, however, this had changed, with some of the change apparently organized into the letter-series system: the F and M series singles were overwhelmingly science fiction, but singles in the original D/G/S series, and the K series titles (all of which were singles), mostly printed books outside Ace's three genres.


By the late 1950's, Ace's output was approaching a hundred titles a year, still heavily dominated by the three main genres.  Almost all the books were 35 cents, though some slim single volumes were 25 cents, and there were a handful at 50 cents.  In the early sixties, rising costs finally forced an increase in the price of the books, and more and more books appeared at 40 cents, 45 cents and more; a few fat volumes such as the 1967 paperback of Frank Herbert's Dune were priced at 95 cents.  Other genres began to make a much more frequent appearance, as well; scores of "nurse romances" appeared, beginning in 1960 with Joan Sargent's Cruise Nurse bound with Calling Dr. Merriman by Margaret Howe.  By the end of the decade perhaps seventy more had appeared, along with gothic novels, self-improvement books, "strange but true" books, and many others.



Ace as a dominant SF publisher

Along with Ballantine Books, Ace dominated the science fiction paperback publishing field in the fifties and sixties.  Other publishers followed their lead and began to cater to the increasing audience for sf but none matched the influence of these two.


The dominance was not reflected only in numbers of books published.  Several noted science fiction authors had their first novel published by Ace in the fifties and sixties.  These include:


Other prominent figures had much early work published by Ace, including John Brunner, Thomas M. Disch, and Robert Silverberg.



Lord of the Rings Controversy

In 1965 Wollheim discovered a copyright loophole in the American edition of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. The Houghton Mifflin edition had been bound using pages printed in the United Kingdom for the George Allen & Unwin edition.  This placed them outside of US copyright law as it stood at the time. Exploiting this loophole, Ace Books published the first ever paperback edition of Tolkien's work, featuring cover art and hand-drawn title pages by Jack Gaughan. After considerable controversy and the release of a competitive, authorized (and more complete) edition by Ballantine Books, Ace agreed to pay royalties to Tolkien and let its still-popular edition go out of print.}
|=FAIL
|HOBBIT|THE HOBBIT=TH
|TFOTR|FELLOWSHIP|THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING|LOTR1=FOTR
|TTT|TWO TOWERS|THE TWO TOWERS|LOTR2=TT
|TROTK|RETURN OF THE KING|THE RETURN OF THE KING|LOTR3=ROTK
|S|SIL|TS|SILMARILLION|THE SILMARILLION=SILM
|UNFINISHED TALES=UT
|1|LT|LT1|TBOLT|LOST TALES|THE BOOK OF LOST TALES=BOLT
|2|LT2|TBOLT2|LOST TALES 2|LOST TALES II|THE BOOK OF LOST TALES II=BOLT2
|3|TLOB|LAYS|THE LAYS OF BELERIAND=LOB
|4|TSOME|SHAPING|THE SHAPING OF MIDDLE-EARTH=SOME
|5|TLROW|LOST ROAD|THE LOST ROAD AND OTHER WRITINGS=LROW
|6|TROTS|RETURN OF THE SHADOW|THE RETURN OF THE SHADOW=ROTS
|7|TTOI|TREASON|THE TREASON OF ISENGARD=TOI
|8|TWOTR|WAR OF THE RING|THE WAR OF THE RING=WOTR
|9|SAURON DEFEATED=SD
|10|MORGOTH'S RING=MR
|11|TWOTJ|WAR OF THE JEWELS|THE WAR OF THE JEWELS=WOTJ
|12|TPOME|PEOPLES|THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH=POME
|TLOJRRT=LETTERS
|BIOGRAPHY=CARPENTER
|READER'S COMPANION=RC
|BIBLIOGRAPHY|DESCRIPTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY=DB
|TOLKIEN READER|THE TOLKIEN READER=TR
|FAMILY ALBUM|TOLKIEN FAMILY ALBUM=TFA
|PICTURES=P
|ARTIST & ILLUSTRATOR=A&I
|TREE & LEAF=T&L
|MONSTERS|THE MONSTERS AND THE CRITICS=M&C
|BLISS|MISTER BLISS=MB
|ROVERANDOM=R
|THE ROAD GOES EVER ON=RGEO
|LFC|LETTERS FROM FATHER CHRISTMAS=FC
|BILBO'S LAST SONG=BLS
|}}}|}}}



1970 to the present




Joanna Russ's And Chaos Died (1970), from the first Ace SF Special series.  The cover is by Leo and Diane Dillon.

Joanna Russ's And Chaos Died (1970), from the first Ace SF Special series.  The cover is by Leo and Diane Dillon.







In 1964 Terry Carr joined the company and in 1968 he initiated the Ace Science Fiction Special line, publishing critically acclaimed original novels by such authors as Alexei Panshin, R. A. Lafferty, Joanna Russ and Ursula Le Guin.  During the mid-late 1960s Ace also obtained licenses to publish original novels based upon several popular television series of the day, most notably The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Prisoner.


Carr and Wollheim also co-edited an annual Year's Best Science Fiction anthology series; and Carr also edited Universe, a well-received original anthology series.  Universe was initially published by Ace, although when Carr left Ace Books in 1971 the series moved elsewhere.


Wyn died in 1967, and the company grew overextended, and failed to pay its authors reliably.  Without money to pay the signing bonus, Wollheim was unwilling to send signed contracts to the authors.  On at least one occasion a book without a valid contract went to the printer, and Wollheim later found out that the author, who was owed $3,000 by Ace, was reduced to picking fruit for a living.


In 1971 both Wollheim and Carr left Ace.  Wollheim had made plans to launch a separate paperback house, and in cooperation with New American Library he proceeded to set up DAW Books.  Carr became a freelance editor; both Carr and Wollheim went on to edit separate Year's Best volumes.


In 1972, Ace was acquired by Grosset & Dunlap, and in 1982, Grosset & Dunlap were acquired by G.P. Putnam's Sons; Ace were reputedly the only profitable element of the Grosset & Dunlap empire by this time.,   Ace soon became the sf imprint of their parent company.


Carr returned to Ace Books in 1984 as a freelance editor, launching a new series of Ace Specials devoted entirely to first novels, almost all from newer authors.   This series was even more successful than the first: it included, in 1984 alone, William Gibson's Neuromancer, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Wild Shore, Lucius Shepard's Green Eyes, and Michael Swanwick's In The Drift; all are first novels by authors now regarded as major figures within the sf genre.


Other prominent sf publishing figures who worked at one time at Ace include Tom Doherty, who left to start Tor Books, and Jim Baen, who left to work at Tor and who eventually founded Baen Books.  Writers who have worked at Ace include Frederik Pohl, Ellen Kushner, and Laura Anne Gilman.


In 1996, Penguin Group (USA) acquired the Putnam Berkley Group, and has retained Ace as their sf imprint.  Ace's current (2006) list includes Julian May, Patricia McKillip, and Sharon Shinn,,, with books from writers such as Alastair Reynolds, Charles Stross, Jack McDevitt and Joe Haldeman planned for the remainder of the year.



Editors

The following people worked at Ace Books in various editorial roles.  The list is sorted in order of the date they started working at Ace, where known.





Serial numbers

Ace titles have had two main types of serial numbers: letter series, such as "D-31" or "H-77", and numeric, such as "10293" or "15697". The letters were used to indicate a price, as given in the following list, which also shows the date range for which each letter prefix was in use.




The first series of Ace books began in 1952 with D-01, a western in dos-a-dos format: Keith Vining's Too Hot For Hell backed with Samuel W. Taylor's The Grinning Gismo.  That series continued until D-599, which was Patricia Libby's Winged Victory for Nurse Kerry; but the series also included several G and S serial numbers, depending on the price.  The D and S did not indicate "Double" (i.e. dos-a-dos) or "Single"; there are D-series titles that are not dos-a-dos, although none of the dos-a-dos titles have an S serial number.


Towards the end of this initial series, the F series was begun, at a new price level, and thereafter there were always several different letter series running simultaneously.  The D and S prefixes did not appear again after the first series, but the G prefix acquired its own series starting with G-501.  Hence the eight earlier G-series titles can be considered part of a different series to the G-series proper.  All series after the first kept independent numbering systems, starting at 1 or 101.


In January 1969, Ace switched to a numeric coding system.  The code depended on the title of the book; or specifically on the first significant word in the title.  For example, Tom Purdom's The Barons of Behavior was published by Ace in about 1972 as serial number 04760.  The first letter of "Barons" is "B", so the code assigned is fairly early in the numeric range 00000 to 99999.  This procedure for assigning numeric codes was in use at Ace at least into the early 1990's, and may still be in use today.  For Ace doubles, one of the titles was selected and used to determine what serial number should be used.  For example, 11560 is the Ace double The Communipaths by Suzette Haden Elgin, backed with Louis Trimble's The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy.  The serial number here is derived from The Communipaths; a serial number derived from the Trimble would have been about 58000.


For the later numeric series titles, the number is also part of the ISBN. To form the ISBN (if it exists) for one of these books one prefixes "0" for English language/US, and "441" (Ace's publisher number), to the serial number.  The last digit can then be calculated with an ISBN check digit calculator.  For example, Christopher Stasheff's Escape Velocity has serial number 21599; the ISBN is 0-441-21599-8.



Ace Titles


Ace titles are frequently collected, both for their covers, and by collectors of the individual genres.  The following articles provide lists of these titles, organized by genre and by format (e.g. dos-a-dos vs. normal format).




Two combined lists are given, one for all Ace Doubles, of whatever genre, and another list of all the Ace Singles.  However, the following lists give the individual series titles, for all genres.





External links



References




The following references works cover various aspects of Ace Books.



  • Corrick, James A. Double Your Pleasure: The Ace SF Double, Gryphon Books, 1989. ISBN 0-936071-13-3.  A historical article, followed by a checklist of the SF Doubles, giving prior publication history for the contents of each one.
  • Thiessen, J. Grant Science Fiction Collector #1, Pandora's Books, 1976.  Includes Ace Double checklist.
  • Thiessen, J. Grant Science Fiction Collector #2, Pandora's Books, date unknown.  Includes errata for checklist in #1.
  • Tuck, Donald H. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 3, Advent: Publishers, Inc., 1982. ISBN 0911682-26-0.  Lists all ACE sf titles, single and double, published through 1968.

The following references have not been seen:



  • Jaffery, Sheldon Double Trouble: A Bibliographic Chronicle of Ace Mystery Doubles, Starmont Popular Culture Series no. 11, Borgo Press, 1987. ISBN 1557421188.
  • Jaffery, Sheldon Double Futures: An Annotated Bibliography of the Ace Science Fiction Doubles, Borgo Press, 1999. ISBN 1557421390.
  • Peters, Harold R. Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror in the Ace Letter-Series Editions: A Collector's Notebook, Silver Sun Press, 1996.





 




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