Pocket Books
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Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster which primarily publishes paperback books.
Pocket produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry. The German Albatross Books had pioneered the idea of a line of color-coded paperback editions in 1931 under Kurt Enoch; Penguin Books in England had refined the idea in 1935 and had one million books in print by the following year.
Penguin's success inspired entrepreneur Robert de Graff, who partnered with publishers Simon & Schuster to bring it to the American market. Priced at 25 cents and featuring the logo of Gertrude the kangaroo (named after the artist's mother-in-law), Pocket Books' editorial policy of reprints of light literature, popular non-fiction and mysteries was coordinated with its strategy of selling books outside the traditional distribution channels. The format size, and the fact that the books were glued rather than stitched, were cost-cutting innovations.
The first ten Pocket Book titles include:
- #1, Lost Horizon by James Hilton
- #2, Wake Up and Live by Dorothea Brande
- #3, Five Great Tragedies by William Shakespeare
- #4, Topper by Thorne Smith
- #5, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
- #6, Enough Rope... by Dorothy Parker
- #7, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- #8, The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
- #9, The Bridge at San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
- #10, Bambi by Felix Salter
Pocket and its imitators thrived during World War II because material shortages worked to their advantage. During the war Pocket sued Avon Books for copyright infringement; among other issues, a New York state court found Pocket did not have an exclusive right to the pocket-sized format. (Both Pocket and Avon published paperback editions of Leslie Charteris's The Saint mystery series, among others.)
Pocket is still known for publishing works of popular fiction based on movies or TV series, such as the Star Trek franchise and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The author credited for one of the Buffy products is "Gertrude Pocket", a reference to the company's kangaroo logo.
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