LA Bantam - Book Vending Machines Part II

In part I the topic of vending machines was introduced. Bantam apparently sold their books through vending machines but I haven't seen any evidence to support that claim. Developing and producing a vending machine was and is not an easy undertaking. How Bantam might have done all of this in 1940 is a mystery.

In this post I'll look briefly at a book vending machine that did exist - the "Book-o-Mat". Developed by the Automatic Book Vending Company of New York, the Book-o-Mat sold only paperbacks published by New York's Pocket Books. There is a picture in the June 1947 Popular Science but it seems that production didn't begin until June 1949. I can find no mention of the machine after that and its safe to say that it was in operation for a very short time.

Popular Science June 1947, page 151

LA Bantam - Love on the Run

The 18th book published by Bantam Publications is Love on the Run by Fred MacIsaac. The book has a 1938 copyright date but I can't find anything about an earlier edition. Searches on WorldCat, Library of Congress, Google and book dealer data bases come up empty. It may have been first published with a different title.

In common with all but one of LA Bantam's books Love on the Run is 100 pages long and is 110 mm (4 5/16") wide by 152 mm (6") tall. Cover and pages are made from high acid pulp paper. The page collation is:

[1] title page,
2-100 Love on the Run.

The copyright date is on the title page.

In common with most LA Bantams there are variant covers, strong yellowish green/light gray and strong yellowish green/light orange yellow versions. The text is identical but in addition to the colour differences the type on the front cover has been changed and the back cover on the strong yellowish green/light orange yellow version has one of the ads seen on the last eight books in the series. My guess is that this is a second printing.

LA Bantam - Publisher's Weekly

"The Weekly Record" was a list "of American book publication in the week of issue" that Publisher's Weekly provided as a "convenient reference and buying list for bookstores and libraries." By sending in 21 of the 29 books to PW for inclusion in this list Bantam Publications did something unique; no other mass market books were listed in the "The Weekly Record."  For three weeks in 1941 Bantam's books were listed in a section for "pamphlet material and books of lesser trade interest."

Bantam books joined such items as Folk Dancing for Jewish Centers, Methods for Diagnostic Bacteriology, The Geology of the Cleveland Region and Just a Moment Please! Dedicated to All Those Persons Whose Future is Still Ahead of Them.

Why did Bantam bother with sending their first 20 books plus one more to PW for inclusion in this listing? I can't imagine it having much impact on sales. Libraries would not be interested in mass market books and bookstores would not expect to see them in PW, particularily in the "lesser trade interest" section. Another one of Bantam's mysteries. Below is a list of the books and the PW issue and the listing for The Tower of Flame [and] Jaragu of the Lost Islands.

April 5, 1941:

1 The Spanish Cape Mystery     Ellery Queen    
2 Little Known Facts About Well Known People     Dale Carnegie    
3 Your Health Questions     Morris Fishbein    
4 Everybody's Dream Book     anon.    
5 How to Make Friends Easily     S. Currie
6 Everybody's Book of Jokes and Wisecracks     Jerome Gregory
7 The Voice of Experience     [Marion Sayle Taylor]
8 Favorite Poems     Henry C. Brown (ed.) 
9 Enter the G-Men     William Engle
10 1000 Facts Worth Knowing     [Joseph Nathan Kane]

April 12, 1941:

11 How to Win and Hold a Husband     Lucille Martin
12 The World's Great Love Affairs     Eleanor Packer (ed.)
13 Children's Favorite Stories      E. Lewis
14 The Lone Ranger and the Secret of Thunder Mountain     Fran Striker
15 Poems of Passion     Ella Wheeler Wilcox
16 Grimms' Fairy Tales     Emily Wayne  E. Lewis
17 Private Lives of Movie Stars     Eleanor Packer (ed.)
18 Love on the Run     Fred MacIsaac
19 The Tower of Flame [and] Jaragu of the Lost Islands     Rex Beach
20 The Story of Rabelais and Voltaire     Hendrik Willem van Loon

September 6, 1941:

25 Nobody Heard the Shot     Donald Barr Chidsey

LA Bantam - Book Vending Machines Part I

I've touched on a couple of the fascinating oddities of Bantam in earlier posts - their price of 10c and headquarters in Los Angeles. Here I'll start commenting on a third one - sold by vending machines. Aside from Bantam's obscurity and rarity this is the one thing that Bantam is famous for. Articles, books, dealer descriptions, web sites almost always refer to the machine vending. Here are a couple of examples:

"[LA Bantams] were distributed mainly on the West Coast and sold through vending machines in the late 1930s." Thomas L. Bonn, Undercover: an Illustrated History of American Mass Market Paperbacks (New York: Penguin, 1982), page 123.

"Bantam Books of Los Angeles was a perback [sic] series sold only [emphasis in original] from [vending] machines." Piet Schreuders, Paperbacks U.S.A. (San Diego: Blue Dolphin, 1981), page 103.

There is, however, one problem with this - I don't know of any evidence for LA Bantams being sold by vending machines. For example, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever seen a picture of the Bantam vending machine or an existing machine. Nor is there yet any documentary evidence for one.

I recently researched the book vending business in the mid century and found that book vending was attempted at least five times from 1939 to 1950 in the US. The machines were produced and used and always with little success. But no evidence of a Bantam machine has turned up. 

I'll end this post with a comment on the evidence in the LA Bantam books. None of the books mention vending. In fact advertisements on books 21 through 28 imply the books are sold at stores. For example here is the back cover of book 25, Nobody Heard the Shot.

Note "This store..." and "... watch our counters." Of course the books could have been sold traditionally as well as in vending machines. More on vending later.

 

LA Bantam - Nobody Heard the Shot

The 25th book published by Bantam Publications is Nobody Heard the Shot: An Aleck West Detective Story by Donald Barr Chidsey. Notwithstanding the "Authorized Abridged Edition" blurb on the cover I can find no source for this book.

In common with all but one of LA Bantam's books Nobody Heard the Shot is 100 pages long and is 110 mm (4 5/16") wide by 152 mm (6") tall. Cover and pages are made from high acid pulp paper. The page collation is:

[1] title page,
[2] copyright including List of Chapters,
3-100 text - 15 chapters.

The copyright dates are 1940 and 1941. The back cover lists 12 of the books from 1, The Spanish Cape Murder to 28, Strangers in Flight.

In common with most LA Bantams there are variant covers. The strong blue/light blue, strong blue/vivid yellow text and illustrated covers are below.

LA Bantam - Little Known Facts About Well Known People

The 2nd book published by Bantam Publications is Little Known facts About Well Known People by Dale Carnegie. Originally published in 1934 (New York: Greenberg), the Bantam edition is abridged with 24 of the original 48 biographies. None of the illustrations in the original edition are reproduced.

In common with all but one of LA Bantam's books Little Known Facts About Well Known People is 100 pages long and is 110 mm (4 5/16") wide by 152 mm (6") tall. Cover and pages are made from high acid pulp paper. The page collation is:

[1] title page,
[2] Contents,
3-100 Little Known Facts About Well Known People.

The copyright date, 1934, is on the contents page. The back cover is an advertisement for Bantam Books.

The dark blue/vivid yellow cover shown below is the only one of which I'm aware.

LA Bantam - Pacific Mutual Building

In some of the books published by Bantam Publications, Inc. of Los Angeles the publisher's address is given as the Pacific Mutual Building. Built in 1908 as corporate headquarters for the Pacific Mutual Insurance Company the building was extended, modified and restored throughout the Twentieth century. Now known as the Pacific Center the complex of three interconnected buildings still exists in downtown Los Angeles at 523 W. 6th St.. Here are photos of the building today.

A lovely building but why was Bantam in Los Angeles? Why not New York, then and now the center of the American publishing industry?

Bantam was owned by Western Printing and Lithographing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. By 1940 Western had an office in Poughkeepsie, NY where they managed their arrangement with Dell Publishing to edit and print Dell's comics and, in 1943, paperbacks. Did Western have an arrangement with someone in LA as they did with Dell? Never heard of one. So the question remains unanswered.

LA Bantam - Favorite Poems

The 8th book published by Bantam Publications is Favorite Poems: A Selection of Popular Poems from the World's Literature compiled by Henry C. Brown. This appears to be an original collection.

In common with all but one of LA Bantam's books Favorite Poems is 100 pages long and is 110 mm (4 5/16") wide by 152 mm (6") tall. Cover and pages are made from high acid pulp paper. The page collation is:

[1] title page,
[2] alphabetic list of 79 poems,
3-100 Favorite Poems.

The copyright date, 1940, is on the contents page. The book was registered in the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries on July 1, 1940. The back cover is an advertisement for Bantam Books.

The strong yellowish green/light blue cover shown below is the only one of which I'm aware.

LA Bantam - Book Content

A break from looking at individual books. I want to compare the 29 Bantam Publications books with the early books that its competitors published. Bantam was the third US mass market paperback publisher after Pocket and the short lived Red Arrow. Three other large publishers, Avon (1941), Dell (1943) and Popular Library (1943) started within a year or two after Bantam quit. An analysis of the first 30 books of the four publishers shows :

crime/mystery/thriller    72 (60%) [Pocket 4 books, Avon 14, Dell 24 and Popular 30]
popular    23 (19%) [Pocket 10, Avon 9, Dell 5]
classic      10 (8%)  [Pocket 9, Avon 1]
rest fiction and non fiction    15 (13%)

Interesting to note that the first publisher, Pocket, had the smallest crime/thriller/mystery group (13%), the next, Avon, larger (47%) and the last two, Dell and Popular, nearly 100%.

Bantam is similar with crime/mystery/thriller the highest fiction category at 8 (28%) but after that Bantam looks very different. Non fiction is the largest category with 11 (38%) and the other fiction is a mix - 3 pulp, 1 western, 2 children, 2 collections of poems, 1 anthology and 1 popular.

At 100 pages Bantam fiction was largely limited to collections, short novels or abridgements - quite different from the other publishers who had a total of 5 anthologies or single author collections. The other publishers had, in total, less than half (5) of Bantam's non fiction count (11).

Enough numbers. More on content in future posts. Here are early books from each of the publishers.

Pocket 11 - 1939

Pocket 11 back

Avon 68 - 1945

Avon 68 back

Dell 101 - 1946

Dell 101 back

Popular 17 - 1943

Popular 17 back

LA Bantam - The Story of Rabelais and Voltaire

The 20th book published by Bantam Publications is The Story of Rabelais and Voltaire by Hendrik Willem van Loon. The "Story of..." are 2 of the 31 chapters in Tolerance (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1925). The LA Bantam edition also has three essays by Voltaire and selections from Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel.

In common with all but one of LA Bantam's books The Story of Rabelais and Voltaire is 100 pages long and is 110 mm (4 5/16") wide by 152 mm (6") tall. Cover and pages are made from high acid pulp paper. The page collation is:

[1] title page,
[2] Table of Contents and copyright,
3-12 The Story of Rabelais,
13-32 The Story of Voltaire,
33-90 Selections from Voltaire's Works,
91-100 Selections from the Works of Rabelais.

The copyright date is 1925. The back cover is an advertisement for Bantam Books.

In common with most LA Bantams there are variant covers. In addition to the dark blue/light gray cover shown below there is a dark blue/light gray version with "10c" in the top right corner.

LA Bantam - Your Health Questions

The 3rd book published by Bantam Publications is Your Health Questions by Morris Fishbein, M.D. The book is a collection from his newspaper column "Health Advice".

In common with all but one of LA Bantam's books Your Health Questions is 100 pages long and is 110 mm (4 5/16") wide by 152 mm (6") tall. Cover and pages are made from high acid pulp paper. The page collation is:

[1] title page,
[2] copyright page,
[3] preface,
[4-6] contents,
7-98 Your Questions On Health,
99-100 index.

The copyright date is 1940. The back cover is an advertisement for Bantam Books.

In common with most LA Bantams there are variant covers. In addition to the strong blue/light orange yellow cover shown below there is a strong blue/vivid yellow version. 

LA Bantam Authors Part I - Eleanor Packer

Eleanor Lewis Packer was an early editor at Whitman Publishing Company which, until 1962, had the exclusive rights to reproduce the Walt Disney characters for juveniles, colouring books and comic books. One web site has her instrumental in the early success of WD comic books. Packer was also an author of Big Little Books for Whitman which was owned by Western Publishing and Lithographing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. Western also owned Bantam Publications, Inc. of Los Angeles (LA Bantam) and here we'll look at her LA Bantam books.

Packer's name is on three LA Bantams but she was also responsible for four others.

5   How to Make Friends Easily     S. Currie
11 How to Win and Hold a Husband     Lucille Martin
12 The World's Great Love Affairs     Eleanor Packer
13 Children's Favorite Stories     Ellen Lewis
16 Grimms' Fairy Tales      Emily Wayne, Ellen Lewis
17 Private Lives of Movie Stars     Eleanor Packer
24 Humorous Anecdotes and Funny Stories     Eleanor Packer

Lucille Martin, Emily Wayne and Ellen Lewis are pseudonyms for Packer and the Currie book has new material by Packer. The source for this information is the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries. Books 5,11 and 12 are copyright July 1, 1940, books 13 and 17 are August 8, 1940, book 16 is September 26, 1940 and book 24 is August 11, 1941. Below are the covers for two of her books.

Bantam Publications 12

Bantam Publications 24

LA Bantam - Poems of Passion

The 15th book published by Bantam Publications is Poems of Passion by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. First published in 1883 (Chicago: W. B. Conkey) the LA Bantam edition includes the preface and all the poems in the original edition.

In common with all but one of LA Bantam's books Poems of Passion is 100 pages long and is 110 mm (4 5/16") wide by 152 mm (6") tall. Cover and pages are made from high acid pulp paper. The page collation is:

[1] title page,
[2] copyright page,
[3] poem,
[4] blank,
[5-6] Poems of Passion list,
[7-8] Miscellaneous Poems list,
[9] Introduction to LA Bantam edition,
[10] blank,
[11-13] Ella Wheeler's Original Preface,
[14] blank,
[15] Poems of Passion,
[16] blank,
17-61 43 poems,
[62] blank,
[63] Miscellaneous Poems,
[64] blank,
65-97 40 poems,
[98] Bantam Books List
[99-100] blank.

The copyright date is 1940. The book was entered in the Library of Congress Catalogue of Copyright Entries on September 26, 1940. The back cover is an advertisement for Bantam Books. The list of books on page 98 has all the books from 1 to 20 except for Poems of Passion.

The strong yellowish green/light gray cover shown below is the only version with which I'm familiar.

LA Bantam - Why 10 cents? Part I

The books published by Bantam Publications, Inc. of Los Angeles (LA Bantam) sold for 10 cents. Before trying to answer the why I'll look at how we know they sold for 10 cents. Virtually all copies of the LA Bantams have no price. I've only seen three books with a price - copies of number 3 Your Health Questions and number 20 the Story of Rabelais and Voltaire have 10 cents in the upper right corner. The last book Red Threads sold for 15 cents. There are copies of the two 10 cent books without a price.

But there is evidence that the books always sold for 10 cents. Each week Publisher's Weekly published "The Weekly Record", a list of "American book publication in the week of the issue." In the April 5, 12 and September 6, 1941 PWs 21 of the 29 LA Bantams are listed. Each of the listings note a price of 10 cents. I'll discuss these listings in more detail in another post. Finally the Bantam advertisements in some of the books let people know that they can buy direct from the publisher for "10c plus 3c a book to cover postage and packing."

So why 10 cents when the two other mass market paperback publishers in 1940, Pocket Books and Penguin USA, sold books for 25 cents? By 1943 Avon, Dell and Popular Library were also selling paperbacks for 25 cents. The large publishers with economies of scale made a profit at 25 cents. They would not have at 10 cents. How did a small publisher like Bantam expect to sell books so cheaply? I don't know.

The books were smaller at 100 pages and more cheaply made with high pulp paper. But Bantam's print runs had to be a fraction of the large publishers and therefore their unit cost was likely comparable, everything else being equal. But Bantam was owned by a printing company - Western Printing and Lithographing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. That may have allowed them to produce the books more cheaply than otherwise. Perhaps a different distribution system that cut out the wholesale distributors used by the large publishers helped. I'll leave the question open at this time and come back to these issues in other posts.

Here are two variants for LA Bantam 20.

LA Bantam - The Tower of Flame: An Oil Fields Story [with] Jaragu of the Lost Islands: A High Seas Story

The 19th book published by Bantam Publications is The Tower of Flame: An Oil Fields Story [with] Jaragu of the Lost Islands: A High Seas Story by Rex Beach. The first Jaragu story was Jaragu of the Jungle published by Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin as a Big Little Book. This was a 428 page 88 mm (3 1/2") x 105 mm (4 1/8") book with text and B&W illustrations. The LA Bantam Jaragu story picks up where the first story ended. There was only one Jaragu BLB and the LA Bantam appears to be the last Jaragu story. The LA Bantam story is an original, not a reprint. The other story Tower of Flame also appears to be an original. Beach's novel Flaming Gold (New York: Harpers, 1922) was about the oil fields but is a different story. 

In common with all but one of LA Bantam's books The Tower of Flame: An Oil Fields Story [with] Jaragu of the Lost Islands: A High Seas Story is 100 pages long and is 110 mm (4 5/16") wide by 152 mm (6") tall. Cover and pages are made from high acid pulp paper. The page collation is:

[1] title page,
2-56 The Tower of Flame,
57-100 Jaragu of the Lost Islands.

The title page has the copyright date - 1940.

In common with most LA Bantams there are variant covers. The strong yellowish green/light orange yellow and strong blue/light orange yellow covers are shown below.

Big Little Book 1424 - 1937

Big Little Book 1424 back

LA Bantam - The Lone Ranger and the Secret of Thunder Mountain

The 14th book published by Bantam Publications is The Lone Ranger and the Secret of Thunder Mountain by Fran Striker. The story was originally called Heigh-Yo Silver! A Story of the Lone Ranger and was published by Dell Publishing Company in Large Feature Comics 3 (1938). This was a 72 page comic with text and B&W illustrations.

In common with all but one of LA Bantam's books The Lone Ranger and the Secret of Thunder Mountain is 100 pages long and is 110 mm (4 5/16") wide by 152 mm (6") tall. Cover and pages are made from high acid pulp paper. The page collation is:

[1] title page,
[2] copyright page,
3-99 text - 17 chapters,
[100] list of Bantam Books for sale.

The copyright page states the original title and copyright date - 1938. The list of books on page 100 has all the books from 1 to 20 except The Lone Ranger.

In common with most LA Bantams there are variant covers. In addition to the strong yellowish green/light gray and strong yellowish green/light blue versions shown below there is a strong yellowish green/light green version.

LA Bantam - The Blue Geranium and other Tuesday Club Murders

Bantam Publications, Inc. of Los Angeles published 29 mass market paperbacks in 1940 and 1941. Often called LA Bantam to distinguish it from the New York mass market publisher Bantam Books, LA Bantam is an obscure and intriguing publisher with complicated business and bibliographic histories. In this blog we'll take a look at the books, myths and history of LA Bantam.  

The best place to start is to describe one of LA Bantam's books.

The 26th book in the series is Agatha Christie's The Blue Geranium and other Tuesday Club Murders. It is a collection of five stories chosen from 13 that were published in The Thirteen Problems (London: Wm. Collins, 1932) and as The Tuesday Club Murders (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1933) when published in the US. There is a detailed publishing history and plot description of each story here. The stories are :

The Blue Geranium
The Companion
The Four Suspects
A Christmas Tragedy
Death by Drowning

In common with all but one of LA Bantam's books The Blue Geranium and other Tuesday Club Murders is 100 pages long and is 110 mm (4 5/16") wide by 152 mm (6") tall. Cover and pages are made from high acid pulp paper. The page collation is:

[1] title page,
[2] copyright page,
[3] contents,
[4] blank,
5-21 The Blue Geranium,
[22] blank,
23-41 The Companion,
[42] blank,
43-58 The Four Suspects,
59-77 A Christmas Tragedy,
[78] blank,

79-100 Death by Drowning.

Note that the cover shown below has a title different from the one on the title page. The copyright page states that the stories are from The Tuesday Club Murders and has four copyright dates - 1928, 1929, 1930 and 1933. The back cover lists 12 of the books from 1, The Spanish Cape Murder to 28, Strangers in Flight.

In common with most LA Bantams there are variant covers. In addition to the strong blue/vivid yellow and illustrated versions shown below there is a strong yellowish green/light blue version.