Maybe I need to go into the "writing books about book covers" business, because the last few I've tried have been somewhat disappointing (not 2-star level disappointing, just that my expectations are high and they aren't being met). This tome at least began with a 40-ish page introduction, but it was a bit more about the history of the paperback, rather than the history of the paperback cover, which is a quite different animal.

The contents were organized very strangely, by genre (from my admittedly faulty memory, the genres were regular, western, romance, sci-fi/fantasy, non-fiction, classic, and lesbian (seriously, it was singled out for its own incredibly tiny section)). Turns out that the reprints of classics had far-and-away the most interesting covers--I'm assuming that, free from the responsibility of hinting about contents (we might not know what a Dell mystery paperback might be about, but we should have a sense of what "Hamlet" contains), artists were able to go a little further out on the limb.

But it's all picture, picture, picture, with very little discussion or insight into what we're seeing, why, how it changes over time, etc. Slightly more than the others I've dived into recently, but not nearly enough.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve!
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The title caught my attention. As a librarian I am interested in all types of books. As an art lover the covers of books have always drawn my attention. As a reader, I tend to drift to popular mass-market paperbacks rather than classic literature.

The book has a very detailed history for publishing in general and the business of mass-market paperbacks specifically. I scanned the text for interesting points but spent most of my time with the book looking at the large array of paperback cover reproductions.

Probably more for book lovers and librarians than the general public.

As the digital age inexorably marches forward, threatening to put the printed word out of print, Breathless Homicidal Slime Mutants is a complete and unabridged argument for why the mass-market paperback must be preserved. -- Book Jacket

Hardcover books looked more imposing; mass-market paperbacks looked more informal. Hardcover jackets were more artful; paperback covers were more commercial. Hardcover graphics were more nuanced; paperback covers titillated by leaving little to the imagination. Hardcover graphics merely suggested the content; paperback covers pounded the plot and/or characters home. …most paperbacks were realistically, romantically, or surrealistically illustrated. (p11) ( )

A nice little cover collection that essentially establishes how the genre niches of the paperback industry came to be created to facilitate marketing; essentially the hybridization of general fiction and the pulp digest magazines. ( )