ABSTRACT
Doubleday's publication of the first six Anchor Books in 1953 has generally been accepted as the start of the modern trade paperback revolution. But this revolution, like the mass market one before it, had some immediate ancestors. They could be found in college bookstores. In no small way, the success of trade paperbacks has derived from a natural affinity that exists between college students and the paper bindings. The medium is at least a lot of the message. In pre-Anchor days, college store paperback departments had a lot of mass market paperbacks, and they have more than ever; the books are products of a system that places prime distribution reliance on magazine channels. Among the first trade paperbacks in college stores were the excellent reprints and originals in science and technology issued by Dover Publications, a firm started in 1942. Dover has since broadened its editorial base, and science-technology accounts for only about 10 percent of its output.
