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Digests |
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Click the group of books beginning alphabetically with:
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My little study of paperbacks on this web site begins in 1939, when Robert DeGraff put out his first numbered modern-sized Pocket Book paperback. But, in truth, they’ve been around considerably longer. The first book printed in America was the Bay Psalm Book in 1640, and (you guessed it!) it was a paperbound book. What DeGraff really did (and Allen Lane before him with Penguin Books in England) was to bring a standardized size and look to mass market books, and to distribute them in a whole new way. Before 1939, the pulp magazine was king. In the mid 1800’s, some literary pulps started carrying full-length novels, and it was soon realized that the digest format was ideal for the purpose. I've posted some of these books in the Pulps & Mags section of the database. You'll also encounter a small section of digest magazines in that section. “Digest” simply refers to the size of the publication, which roughly means that it was not “full” size. There is nothing standardized about digests. They come in various heights, widths, thicknesses and types of construction. Some are stapled. Some have a slick-paper cover, some covers support color, some have no illustration at all. In the early 1920’s, with the advent of the immensely popular Reader’s Digest, the term took on a second meaning: “condensed.” Many Armed Services Books carry the boast “This is a complete book - not a digest.” Avon and Mercury were definitely the largest of the digest book publishing houses, but Avon dropped out early in favor of its standard paperback-sized books. Mercury, which published mystery books almost exclusively, also sold under the Bestseller and Jonathan labels. The “Sexy Digests" are by far the most collectible digest-sized books. However, in an effort to keep from duplicating images with the "Sleaze" books, I've created a separate folder for those. Go back to the database index page and look for them just under the "Digests" folder. PLEASE NOTE: I have listed the name of the publisher with the first entry in the database only. If you download the images or buy the BookScans CD, you will notice that I've abbreviated many of the publishers' names, but you'll figure it out. TNC, for example, is Thriller Novel Classic. In a few cases, publishers of digest-sized books also issued mass market paperback sized books in the same runs. Where this occurs in the database, I've included the annotation "(pb)" after the book number. The Hangman House book to the left is a good example. It was NOT a digest, but it was issued as part of a run of digest-sized books.
Updated May 2007 |
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