LA Bantam - 10 Cents Revisited Part IV

Since my last post on Bantam Publications and the 10 cents their books cost I've picked up a couple of the copies that had a red 10 cent sticker added to the top right corner of the front cover. That means I now have information on three and partial on a fourth.

There are a couple of patterns to note. All four books are from the first group published in 1940 (numbers 1 to 20). The back cover ad on the three below is the earliest version seen only on the first group of Bantams. No conclusions from this small sample but as I find more we'll see if they hold up.

Bantam 9

Bantam 9 back

Bantam 17

Bantam 20



Red Arrow - Thirteen at Dinner

The first book published by Red Arrow Books is Thirteen at Dinner by Agatha Christie, first published as Lord Edgware Dies in 1933 by the Scottish-British publisher Wm. Collins. The American edition with the new title was published New York: Dodd, Mead, 1933. 

Thirteen at Dinner is 288 pages long and is 111 mm (4 3/8") wide by 179 mm (7 1/16") tall, the same size as the early Penguins. The page collation is:

[1] half-title,
[2] BY THE SAME AUTHOR [list of seven books],
[3] title page,
[4] copyright page,
[5] about Red Arrow Books,
[6] blank,
[7-8] contents,
[9] dedication,
[10] blank,
11-283 Thirteen at Dinner,
[284-288] blank.

The copyright date is 1939.

There are variant covers: two text, a "Book Club" edition and an illustrated one. One text version has a red spine and back cover (see below), the other a brown spine and back cover.

LA Bantam - 10 cents Revisited Part III

I've discussed in a few posts the 10 cent price that Bantam Publications sold mass market paperbacks for in 1940 and 1941. I've been trying to understand how Bantam expected to make a profit when Pocket Books cleared around 1 cent on their selling price of 25 cents in 1940.

A look at today's mass market paperbacks might help.

The latest NYT top 20 best-selling mass market paperback list has ten books at $7.99 and ten at $9.99 (all figures US). Are there MMPs selling at significantly less than these prices? The answer is yes - Harlequin and their competitors in the series romance market. Most of the 12 million books that Harlequin sells each month are in their over 50 romance series with prices ranging from $4.50 to $5.99. Harlequin also sells non-series books at the normal price.

The romance series books are marketed and sold like magazines: a shelf life of a month with most sales outside of bookstores. The books are also shorter than a typical MMP at 192 to 296 pages. And with standard lengths and known print runs for some 80 books each month Harlequin and other romance series publishers likely have the cheapest per unit print cost in the publishing industry.

Bantam had the short books (all but one at 100 pages) but shared nothing else with today's low cost MMP publishers of romance series. And, of course, unlike Pocket Books and publishers today, Bantam neglected to put a price on its books.

Below are a recent 500 page $9.99 MMP, a $5.99 Harlequin and a 10 cent Bantam with the price sticker the publisher eventually added.

Ace Books - March 2007

Harlequin Historical 999 - July 2010

Bantam 20 - 1940

La Bantam Bibliographically Speaking Part I

There are five differences between the many Bantam variants - three for the front covers with text, the illustrated covers for issues 21 to 28 and the ads on the back covers. The three front covers differences are the colour combinations, the "eye of the bantam" and the text font. So far I've seen no differences in anything between the covers for any of the book variants.

There are ten colour combination for the text covers and I can't see a pattern. But there are patterns for the ads, the eye and the text font. So far all books I've seen with ad 1 have a black bantam eye and italic font. Also all books with ad 2 have non-italic font and do not have the black eye. The first pattern is seen only on books 1 - 20, the second on books from the first group (1 - 20) and the second (21 -28). Below are examples from the two patterns.

There are no illustrated cover variants. All have the black eye, same font and ad 4.

Bantam 14

Bantam 14 back

Bantam 22

Bantam 22 back

Bantam 22

Bantam 22 illustrated back

Red Arrow - the Other Red Arrrow

The "Red Arrow" discussed in this blog wasn't the only Red Arrow in the vintage publishing world. In 1950, ten years after the American Red Arrow ended its 13 book life, London's T.V. Boardman Company, Limited started its Red Arrow imprint. As far as I can determine there were 33 books - 5 romance, 7 crime and 21 westerns. Here we'll look at the only one with a Canadian connection.

The Corpse Was a Blonde is a paperback original written by Canadian Horace Brown. Early in his career Brown was a newspaper reporter and editor. He worked as the script writer for the CBC in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Later he wrote plays and had stories published in magazines such as Saturday Night and Star Weekly. He also wrote for two short lived magazines he published, Original Detective Stories and All-New Western Stories.

LA Bantam Authors Part II - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In part I of this post I discussed the only author that had more than one book published by Bantam Publications, Inc. Eleanor Packer was an employee at a company owned by the  company that owned Bantam and edited six of Bantam's books.

The other 23 books Bantam published had 23 authors.

Book 15, Poems of Passion, was written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 - 1919). Wilcox was very popular in her time and isn't completely forgotten today. One of some 70 books by Wilcox, Poems of Passion was published in 1883 (Chicago: W.B. Conkey). It was her most popular work and includes "Solitude" with her most famous line:

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone."

The first edition of Poems of Passion contains 82 poems. The Bantam edition manages to reprint them all plus the four page author's preface and a new introduction.

LA Bantam - 10 cents Revisited Part II

Part I discussed another series of paperbacks that sold for 10 cents published by Dell. Like many LA Bantam books, all but four of the Dells had been published earlier but not in book form. Three had appeared previously in separate book form and one was a paperback original. Here are two more from the series. They are among the most recognizable and expensive of vintage paperbacks.

Marihauna first appeared in the May 3, 1941 edition of Detective Fiction Weekly. The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches was first published in Mystery Book Magazine Summer 1950.

Dell 10 cent series 11

Dell 10 cent series 33

LA Bantam Illustrated Covers Part III

Here are the seventh of nine illustrated covers seen on Bantam Publications books. There are two copies of The Blue Geranium and other Tuesday Club Murders. On the first the laminate covering the card stock can be seen. This is the only illustrated Bantam I've seen with laminate on the back cover. The other copy has only the ghost of laminate remaining. The effect of the laminate on the image is very clear.

LA Bantam 26

LA Bantam 26 back



LA Bantam Back Covers

Anyone reading this blog knows that Bantam Publications books come in many variants. Making sense of them bibliographically is a challenge as the text is always identical and only the last book, Red Threads, has printing information.

One important difference between variants is the back cover where all of the books, excepting the last one, have house ads for Bantam. There were four different ads. Can they help sort out the variants? Perhaps. I haven't seen all of the books and their variants but here's some preliminary analysis.

The first ad appears only on books 1 to 20 which, based on other information, I believe were published before books 21 to 28. The text cover versions of books 21 to 28 have either ads 2 or 3. However some variants of books 1 to 20 also have either ads 2 or 3. The illustrated cover versions of books 21 to 28 have ad 4 only.

The difference between ads 2 and 3 is one more book (Spanish Cape Mystery) is listed in ad 3. The same books are always listed in the ads. Note that the lists include a selection of books from 1 to 28. In ad 4 the other books in the illustrated series are listed, leaving out the book in which the ad appears.

One conclusion from this is that books 1 to 20 with ad 1 were the first published. Then some or all of books 1 to 20 were republished with ads 2 and/or 3 at the same time as the text versions of books 21 to 28. Finally the illustrated versions of books 21 to 28 were published. I'll leave the speculation there for now.

ad 1 - LA Bantam 2

ad 2 - LA Bantam 18

ad 3 - LA Bantam 25 - text variant

ad 4 - LA Bantam 27 illustrated variant

LA Bantam - 10 cents Revisited Part I

I've discussed LA Bantam's 10 cents price in a couple of posts (parts I and II) and don't have anything to add about LA Bantam. But I thought it would be interesting to see other examples of publishers selling paperbacks for less than the standard 25 cents.

The best known American example is Dell Publishing Company, Inc. of New York and their 10 cents series from 1951. They were described by the publisher as "a pocket-sized book at a price of 10 [cents] each." The trim size was equal to Dell regular books but the page count was considerably less at 64 pages. The 36 book experiment shows that even a large successful publisher couldn't sell profitably at 10 cents. But at least by clearly marking the books as 10 cents Dell didn't make the same mistake as Bantam.

Dell 10 cent 18

Dell 10 cent 18 back

Dell 10 cent 36

Dell 10 cent 36 back

Red Arrow Book Club

As far as I know the Red Arrow Books "Book Club" version of its thirteen books are unique among early American mass market paperback publishers.

Books 1 to 12 came in two other versions and one book, the unnumbered The Unspeakable Gentleman, is seen only in the Book Club version. For the two Book Club books with multiple versions that I've seen the only difference is the covers. Examples of the front and back covers are below. The spine has the same title and author but not the number or logo that the other versions have. The Book Club inside covers are red with the logo and blank white on the other versions. With one exception all the pages, including the title, copyright and text, are identical. The exception is Captain Nemesis where the Book Club version has the logo on the title page and the regular version doesn't.

The Book Club is not advertised in any Red Arrow books that I've seen and I have not been able to find out anything about it. The type only version of the first 12 books were published in the fall of 1939. See here for the Publisher's Weekly ad. The last unnumbered book has a 1940 date. Perhaps all the Book Club versions were created in 1940.

Red Arrow 6

Red Arrow 10

back of all Book Club editions



LA Bantam and Red Arrow - A Shared Author

The two early short-lived mass market paperback publishers that share this blog also share one author - Agatha Christie. With the 120th anniversary of her birthday just four days away this is a good time to compare her treatment by these two publishers.

It is not surprising Christie is the one author shared by the two publishers. Generally accepted as the second best selling author of all time (behind Shakespeare with an estimated 2 - 4 billion books sold) Christie's books are among the earliest published by the early mass market publishers. The early Dell version of The Tuesday Club Murders is below.

The LA Bantam is a collection of five stories chosen from an original 13 that were published as The Thirteen Problems in England and as The Tuesday Club Murders in the US in 1931. The Red Arrow is a novel originally published in 1934 as Lord Edgware Dies. Later that year it was published in the United States as Thirteen At Dinner. Both examples below are the text only covers. They exist in illustrated versions also.

Red Arrow 1 - 1939

Bantam 26 - 1940

Dell 8 - 1943

LA Bantam - Illustrated Covers Part II

In part I I discussed the nine illustrated covers that Bantam produced for books 21 through 28 plus A1. Books 21 to 28 also came with type covers.

Here are three more of the illustrated covers. The only signed cover art is seen here - Nobody Heard the Shot. Note a feature that is common to the covers. The front cover and spine were laminated for better wear but the laminate has often lifted to some degree. The addition of the laminate also caused some deterioration to the colours.

The lifting of the laminate is also found in early Pocket Books. See the example below.

Bantam 22

Bantam 25

Bantam 27

Pocket Books 11

LA Bantam - the Eye of the Bantam

Bantam Publications published most, if not all, of its books (except the last one) with variant covers. There were different colours on the text covers and, for eight of the books, illustrated covers. However the one consistent feature was the large red bantam logo. But even here there were two variants - one with a black dot for the eye and one with the eye showing the background colour. Approximately 3/4 of the 40 some variants I've seen have the black dot. Is there any bibliographic significance to this? Don't know - need to see more variants. One interesting feature is that books with the dot have an italicized front cover blurb; those without the dot have a non-italicized blurb. All nine illustrated covers have a dot. And to confuse matters there is one book, Humorous Anecdotes, with no eye - although other copies of the book with an otherwise identical cover have the eye without the dot.

LA Bantam 19 with dot

LA Bantam 18 with dot

LA Bantam 18 without the dot

LA Bantam 24 with no eye

LA Bantam - The Green Death and Other Stories

The 22nd book published by Bantam Publications is The Green Death and Other Stories by Brett Hutton. I can find no sources for the stories.

In common with all but one of Bantam's books The Green Death 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 and contents page,
3-70 The Green Death,
71-85 The Man Who Would Not Fight,
86-100 Legionnaires of Death.

The copyright date is 1940. 

In common with most LA Bantams there are variant covers, four with text and one illustrated. The text covers are strong blue/light blue, strong blue/light gray, strong blue/light yellowish green and strong yellowish green/light blue. The first two text and illustrated covers are below.