 | |
| Parent company | Simon & Schuster |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1939 |
| Founder | |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | 1230 Avenue of the Americas, Rockefeller Center, New York City |
| Official website | www |
Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books. [1] [2]
Pocket Books produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in the United States 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, and Penguin Books in Britain had refined the idea in 1935 and had one million books in print by the following year.
Pocket Books was founded by Richard L. Simon, M. Lincoln ("Max") Schuster and Leon Shimkin, partners of Simon & Schuster, along with Robert Fair de Graff. [3]
Penguin's success inspired entrepreneur Robert F. 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 mother-in-law of the artist, Frank Lieberman), 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 small format size, 4.25" by 6.5" (10.8 cm by 16.5 cm) and the fact that the books were glued rather than stitched, were cost-cutting innovations.
The first ten numbered Pocket Book titles published in May 1939 with a print run of about 10,000 copies each:
This list includes seven novels, the most recent being six years old ( Lost Horizons , 1933), two classics (Shakespeare and Wuthering Heights , both out of copyright), one mystery novel, one book of poetry (Enough Rope), and one self-help book.
The edition of Wuthering Heights hit the bestseller list, and by the end of the first week sold out of its initial 100,000 copy run. [5] By the end of the year Pocket Books had sold more than 1.5 million units. Robert de Graff continued to refine his selections with movie tie-ins and greater emphasis on mystery novels, particularly those of Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner.
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' The Saint mystery series, among others).
In 1944, the founding owners sold the company to Marshall Field III, owner of the Chicago Sun newspaper. Following Field's death in 1957, Leon Shimkin, a Simon & Schuster partner, and James M. Jacobson bought Pocket Books for $5 million. [3] Simon & Schuster acquired Pocket in 1966.
Phyllis E. Grann who would later become the first woman CEO of a major publishing firm was promoted to run Pocket Books under then CEO Richard E. Snyder. Grann left for Putnam in 1976. [6]
In 1981, Dr. Benjamin Spock's Baby and Child Care was listed as their top seller, having sold 28 million copies at that time and having been acquired in 1946. [4]
In 1989, The Dieter by Susan Sussman became the first hardcover published by Pocket Books.
Pocket was for many years known for publishing works of popular fiction based on movies or TV series, such as the Star Trek franchise (owned by former corporate siblings CBS Television Studios and Paramount Pictures). Since first obtaining the Star Trek license from Bantam Books in 1979 (with a publication of the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture ), Pocket has published hundreds of original and adapted works based upon the franchise and continues to publish a new novel every month. [7] [8] Beginning in 2017 with novels based on Star Trek: Discovery , the Star Trek novel lines have gradually moved to Simon & Schuster's Gallery Books line.
Pocket also previously published novels based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer . The author credited for one of the Buffy products is Gertrude Pocket, a reference to the company's kangaroo logo. (The Buffy novels are now published by Simon Spotlight Entertainment, another division of Simon & Schuster.) Pocket Books is also the division that currently owns publication rights to the well-known work of James O'Barr, The Crow .
A paperback book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardback (hardcover) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic.
Ballantine Books is a major American book publisher that is a subsidiary of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Ballantine was founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. Ballantine was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann in 1998 and remains part of that company.
Star Trek: New Frontier is a series of interlinked novels written by Peter David, published by Simon & Schuster imprints, Pocket Books, Pocket Star, and Gallery Books, from 1997 to 2015. New Frontier was the first Star Trek tie-in fiction property not to be based on a television series. The series was created by John J. Ordover.
Simon & Schuster LLC is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers. As of 2017, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publisher in the United States, publishing 2,000 titles annually under 35 different imprints.
Christie Golden is an American author. She has written many novels and several short stories in fantasy, horror and science fiction.
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by parent company Random House, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine, with funding from Grosset & Dunlap and Curtis Publishing Company. It has since been purchased several times by companies including National General, Carl Lindner's American Financial and, most recently, Bertelsmann, which in 1986 purchased what had grown to become the Bantam Doubleday Dell publishing group. Bertelsmann purchased Random House in 1998, and in 1999 merged the Bantam and Dell imprints to become the Bantam Dell publishing imprint. In 2010, the Bantam Dell division was consolidated with Ballantine Books to form the Ballantine Bantam Dell group within Random House. By no later than February 2015, Bantam Books had re-emerged as a stand-alone imprint within Random House; as of 2023, it continues to publish as the Bantam imprint, again grouped in a renamed Ballantine division within Random House.
Greg Cox is an American writer of science fiction, including works that are media tie-ins. He lives in Oxford, Pennsylvania.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture. A Novel is a 1979 novelization of the film Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which was released in the same year. It is especially notable for being the only Star Trek novel to be written by Gene Roddenberry, who created the franchise. The book was also the first Star Trek novel published by Pocket Books.
Dell Publishing Company, Inc. is an American publisher of books, magazines and comic books, that was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte Jr. with $10,000, two employees and one magazine title, I Confess, and soon began turning out dozens of pulp magazines, which included penny-a-word detective stories, articles about films, and romance books.
In 1966, Bantam Books acquired the license to publish tie-in fiction based on the science fiction television series Star Trek.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a science fiction anthology series of licensed, fan-written, short stories based on, and inspired by, Star Trek and its spin-off television series and films. The series was published by Simon & Schuster, from 1996 to 2016, edited by Dean Wesley Smith, with assistance from John J. Ordover and Paula M. Block. The collected stories were submitted by amateur writers.
Timetrap (ISBN 0671648705) is an original-series Star Trek novel by David Dvorkin, published by Pocket Books in 1988. For the week of June 12, 1988, Timetrap was the fifth-best-selling paperback book on The New York Times Best Seller list. The novel originally sold for US$3.95. Timetrap is Pocket's 40th numbered novel from the retronymed Star Trek: The Original Series. Simon & Schuster released an e-book version in September 2000.
Voyages of Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion (2006) is a reference work by Jeff Ayers published by Pocket Books. The book contains entries on the production and publication of Star Trek tie-in novels published from 1967 to 2006. Included are brief synopses of plots for each featured novel.
Penguin Random House Limited is a British-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was originally founded in 1935 and Random House was founded in 1927. It has more than 300 publishing imprints. Along with Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers.
Leon Shimkin was an American businessman who helped to build Simon & Schuster into a major publishing company. Shimkin was responsible for many self-help bestsellers turning Dale Carnegie's lectures into the bestselling book How to Win Friends and Influence People and J.K. Lasser's tax books. Shimkin co-founded Pocket Books and was a pioneer by distributing mass market paperbacks through newsstands and drugstores. Shimkin became the third partner to Simon & Schuster's Max Schuster and Richard L. Simon and remained as an executive after Simon & Schuster was sold to Field Enterprises, Inc. in 1944. Shimkin rose to become chairman of the board and owner of Simon & Schuster until he sold it to Gulf + Western in 1975.
Max Lincoln Schuster was an American book publisher and the co-founder of the publishing company Simon & Schuster. Schuster was instrumental in the creation of Pocket Books, and the mass paperback industry, along with Richard L. Simon, Robert F. DeGraff and Leon Shimkin. Schuster published many famous works of history and philosophy including the Story of Civilization series of books by Will Durant and Ariel Durant.
Kirsten Beyer is an American science fiction writer, known for her novels based on the Star Trek: Voyager television series. She was a staff writer for Star Trek: Discovery, and co-creator and executive producer of Star Trek: Picard.
| Founders |  | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Investments | |||||||||||||||||
| Subsidiaries |
| ||||||||||||||||
| Related | |||||||||||||||||
