Popis: |
When the pulps started to decline in the late 1940s, paperback books soon became the new format for post-war crime narratives. The soft-cover cheap paperback books revolutionized the genre of crime fiction and recreated a new space to disseminate crime stories that were the product of the post-war US scene. After the inception of the Pocket Book, many companies joined the flourishing paperback publishing industry.171 Companies such as Avon, Popular Library, and Dell opened their doors for a large number of crime writers to produce originals in paperback format. The publishing industry was thus quick to respond to a wider readership and a changing market to suit the post-war mood (Haut 1995: 4). Although the paperback boom started with reprints, the 1950s and 1960s witnessed a full flowering of paperback originals, which soon constituted a mass market for popular literature. David Goodis, Jim Thompson, Chester Himes, Willford, John D. MacDonald, Gil Brewe are among those who wrote successful paperbacks that sold in millions.172 |