The Paperback Show Podcast

  This week we cover a type of paperback that was forgotten until the mid-nineties when dealers began to promote and sell "sleaze" paperbacks . They were (generally) soft-core novels with middle or lower-class protagonists whose lives are complicated by sex, status, and the desire for money. Sex has always sold books, but with censorship laws loosening in the late fifties and sixties, publishers began to sell novels whose primary appeal was sex and the infinite varieties of arousal. We discuss the history of this unique paperback genre, how the books were written, distributed and the people who read them (primarily men). The era (excuse the pun) "peaked" in the 1960s when new readers and marketplaces emerges (the adult bookstore). Even established authors like Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison wrote (using pseudonyms) these "sleazy novels). And despite the fact that society looked down on these types of books, a lot of money was made creating and distributi...

I've put together a small gallery of Orie Hitt paperback covers. Most of the images are from a great Flickr gallery/group " Vintage Sleaze Paperbacks ". There are so many collections of Sleaze covers on the net, just google or bing search "vintage sleaze". Artists who created many of these covers are featured in a fabulous book, " Sin-A-Rama " edited by Adam Parfrey and B. Astrid Daley, published by Feral House.  Some of the great sleaze cover artists are  Robert Bonfils , Gene Bilbrew , Eric Stanton , Bill Ward , and a personal favorite, Darrel Millsap . Many sleaze cover artists were uncredited and were glad for it because, like the writers of sleaze, they had careers in strait illustration that would be jeopardized if it were known they did sleazy sex covers.     ...

This week we'll be talking about Gold Medal Paperbacks . Founded in 1950 by Fawcett publications, this company was the first successful publisher of paperback originals. That means they didn't reprint already published hardback books which every other paperback publisher did, but original works of fiction. And they were incredibly successful.  We begin the show however with a brief note of recent paperback reads of British Library publications. The library re-prints and creates original collections of mysteries, science fiction, and horror in their collection. Their selections are excellent as is the design of the covers.  There is an abundance of research material on Gold Medal paperback history. I found the most interesting information in Gary Lovisi's Paperback Parade #33 which includes "Gold Medal Books", "Gold Medal at the Movies", and an interview with Gold Medal editor Know Burger. You can find back issues of Paperback Parade on Ebay and Amazon.co...

 This is a collection of Gold Medal paperback covers both from my collection and from my roaming around the internet doing research. The best info on covers, the artists, and the background of cover art production at Gold Medal is found in Piet Schreuder's magnificent Paperbacks, USA: A Graphic History. He states that Al Allard was the Art Director at Gold Medal (at least at the beginning) who had a background in stage design and advertising.  Some of Al Allard's cover designers for Gold Medal include:  Barye Phillips James Meese Mike Hooks Louis Glanzman Frank Tinsley John Floherty, Jr.