ABSTRACT
The 1930s was not a good decade for new enterprise in British publishing, which was certainly not exempt from the general economic malaise (Eichengreen 2004). Despite the achievements of Unwin and Gollancz, the general ethos in the trade was conservative rather than radical, and favoured retrenchment rather than expansion. Yet what was perhaps the greatest single innovation in twentieth-century publishing emerged during this discouraging time: the mass market paperback. The paperback revolutionised the commercial world of books. By the 1970s, it was ubiquitous, and had become a familiar presence where books had rarely been seen before. From an historical perspective, however, although the material from which its cover is made has given its name to the paperback, this was not actually the great innovation. The key to an understanding of the history of the modern paperback is to consider how the market for it was identified and developed.
