On June 19, 1939 Pocket Books of New York introduced the mass market paperback to the US. Seventy years later Pocket Books imprints exist within Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publishing division of CBS Corporation.
The story for the second American mass market publisher (excepting the American division of Penguin) is much different. Red Arrow Books of Milwaukee, Wisconsin published its first 12 books on October 16, 1939 (Publisher's Weekly, October 14, 1939, p. 1539) in Milwaukee. An ad in that issue of PW introduces the 12 book list. The ad notes that "a mammoth, dormant market awaits the right kind of low-priced books".
Excepting one these were also the last books published by Red Arrow Books. They clearly had problems from the start - notice the ad is targeting book stores. Pocket Books and later other paperback publishers also had ads in PW but the make-or-break business was with the newsstands, drug, department and cigar stores of the day. Red Arrow very likely never found adequate distribution in those spots.
But Red Arrow did try some almost unique experiments to sell the books. Each of the first five books exist in four issues. The first and second are much the same with a text only cover, the only difference being a change in the colour of the spine and back cover. But the next two are quite different. The third has an illustrated cover, while the fourth is a Book Club edition with the price and blurb removed from the front cover. The last two have the list of books removed from the back cover. The contents have not been changed for any of the issues. Books 6 to 12 have three issues, one text version along with the illustrated and book club versions. A final unnumbered book exists in a book club edition only.
Below are examples of the text, illustrated and book club issues.
Publisher's Weekly ad
Red Arrow 3
Red Arrow 3
Red Arrow 10
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