Paperback Fiction

Abstract

There have been several “paperback revolutions” in fiction publishing, the first of which unfolded during the first half of the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States (→ Fiction; Fictional Media Content). Cheap bulk postal costs encouraged American publishers to print royalty-free foreign novels (those of Charles Dickens, for example) in lightweight large quarto or newspaper formats, offering cheap installments to subscribers. They could thus be claimed as periodicals, gaining access to third-class postal rates and railroad distribution across the country. Schurman (1996, 63) notes that by the mid-1840s in the United States, “paperback novels could be had thr..