ABSTRACT
In an average month, perhaps 1500, perhaps 2000 titles will be published in paperback. The total would include everything: mass market and trade books; popular, professional, religious, juvenile books; monographs and lowest common denominator kind of kitsch, reprints and originals; books making their first appearance in paperback and earlier paperbacks that have been repackaged or otherwise revivified. Publishers Weekly and the Library of Congress, in a joint title-counting effort, found that 8700 trade paperbacks and 2802 mass market paperbacks were published in 1974. Publishers Weekly devotes 2-4 pages a week to paperback reviews. Since this is a service for trade bookstore and jobber buyers, the reviews appear two or three months before the books are actually published. Space in the magazine is very limited, and the reviewer can cover only a fraction of 1 percent of a month's paperback titles. The selection provides some insight into the editorial state of paperback publishing.
