![]() (Pocket sold 100,000,000 books in its first 6 years. Paperbacks, Pocket Books, pocket books, and pocked-sized books are not synonymous, although in popular usage they were nearly so for a while. Nobody got rich off paperbacks, not even Pocket.) A million-selling paperback made an author $5000. Pocket only made a penny profit on each book: how could anyone go lower? (The author and publisher of the original hardback split their penny. Everybody knew what a pocket-sized paperback cost no matter which of the hundreds of imitating companies issued one. Their low price, set at a quarter, was so distinctive that Pocket Books stopped printing the price on their covers. ![]() Not for nothing are they now called mass-market paperbacks. They were liberatingly small and light, like a smartphone, and so were the most portable of media devices. Pocket Books (and pocket books) fit in a suit pocket, or a purse. In the 1930s, every literate male other than a few in the poorest class wore suits seven days a week. ![]() ![]() ![]() standard at 6.5"x4.2" and so modern readers, who would think in terms of a shirt pocket, might think it misnamed. All of these were so-called pocket-sized, although the original Tauchnitz were a hair shorter and wider than the others. ![]()
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