The 43rd LA Vintage Paperback Show took place on March 19, 2023. Created and produced by Tom Lessor (thank you, Tom), the show was a lot of fun. More importantly it featured over 40 paperback sellers nicely spaced inside of the Glendale Auditorium. I purchased about $50 worth of books from a variety of sellers. Most of the books were from sellers dollar boxes which the stacked under their selling counters. It was a bit of a scramble to get a place, but I found a lot of wonderful paperbacks which I share in this video.
PS Thanks to Jules Burt (an excellent paperback collector and youtuber) for the inspiration to create this video.
Jules Burt
/ @julesburt
Ian Ballantine was a young graduate student in 1939. He wrote a thesis on the economics of the paperback industry in the late 1930s that brought him to the attention of several paperback publishers. He opened the American branch of Penguin Books (a UK company) in 1939. Ian was primarily responsible for re-selling Penguins in the United States. However, World War 2 cut off his shipments from the UK, so he began to publish paperbacks himself. One change he made was to add illustrated covers to his paperbacks which were primarily sold through magazine distributors and needed an eye-catching cover to compete. But when Penguin founder Anthony Lane visited the U.S. Penguin offices after the war, he was appalled at these new illustrated covers. He demanded that the paperbacks be simply text and be color-coded like the British Penguins. Ian Ballantine refused and left the company. Ian started his own company with his wife Betty Ballantine and secured funding from a major hardback publi...