Paperback Recession

Some of the best and worst books ever written can be picked up at most U.S. newsstands for 25-c- to 50-c-. In the past two years, about 250 million paperbacks, from Plato to Kathleen Winsor.

have been sold annually, many of them to people who had seldom bought a hardcover book. Quickie publishers went into the business with the plain intention of out-trashing the trashiest. As business boomed, prices for reprint rights were bid to extravagant heights: $20,000 for a novel became a commonplace. Some hardcover publishers accepted manuscripts that they would ordinarily have rejected, if they could be sure of a profitable resale to a paperback firm.

This spring the bonanza began to peter out. Last week one of the most knowing New York publishers said flatly: "The paperbound business is going to hell." Paperback sales were down only about 10% from last year, but returns of books from dealers were up as much as 100%.

Many of these were "premature returns" --a trade euphemism that simply means the books were shipped back without even being unpacked. At least four companies were planning to suspend publication for the summer. One of the largest and best paperback publishers is cutting book production by a third, and industry output may be cut by as much as a half.

What happened? Publishers had flooded their market. Distributors who knew nothing about books shipped out titles indiscriminately, then engaged in dog-eat-dog fights for display space on the racks of embattled retailers who seldom know Homer from Mike Hammer. But the retailers did know when they had enough.

As long as a year ago. Pocket Books' Executive Vice President Freeman Lewis estimated that unsold paperbacks numbered 175 million. By this spring, the "enormous pipeline." as one publisher put it, was hopelessly clogged. Said one publishing spokesman: "Most of this was hack stuff, trash. The public rebelled." No publisher and few readers wanted to see the paperbacks disappear. Along with the rubbish have come reprints of first-rate writing, e.g., Faulkner and Hemingway. Low paperback prices--in contrast with prohibitively priced hard-cover books--attracted a whole new reading public. Some publishers believe that the present shake-out is healthy, may restore some dignity to the paperback business.

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