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Sleaze by the million
It soon becomes apparent when reading the first few chapters of this interesting book that in this tiny part of the publishing industry were an equally small number of people (mostly males, obviously) yet they were responsible for producing millions of trash paperbacks that sold in the Fifties, Sixties and early Seventies. This book is a celebration of their endeavours.Because of the very competitive arena in which these publishers worked, with twenty or more new titles each month the covers were the main selling point and the three hundred plus reproduced in this book show that you don't mess with a successful formulae. They had to show a female (unless it was for the gay market) as provocatively posed as possible with a two or three word title to complete the package. It has to be said though that the quality of these illustrations is pretty poor which only makes the work of one or two artists really stand out. Robert Bonfils, in particular, consistently turned out quality art and sleaze artists like Stanton, Bilbrew and Bill Ward were made for this market. No cover design could be too tacky for this publishing genre.The bulk of the book are the cover reproductions (each with date, publisher, author and artist credits) with several short essays in the front. The two about soft core publishing on the East and West coasts were interesting because they actually explain the background to the publishers and more importantly how the books were distributed through the network of adult book stores in most cities and towns. The back has a useful list of publishers and authors pseudonyms. I was slightly disappointed with the books production though, there is no real page design, paragraphs are excessively long and columns just fall short because no one bothered to make adjustments to the picture sizes to compensate. Despite this 'Sin-a-rama' will probably be the only book to comprehensively cover the publishing world of paperback sleaze.***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.
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It soon becomes apparent when reading the first few chapters of this interesting book that in this tiny part of the publishing industry were an equally small number of people (mostly males, obviously) yet they were responsible for producing millions of trash paperbacks that sold in the Fifties, Sixties and early Seventies. This book is a celebration of their endeavours.
Because of the very competitive arena in which these publishers worked, with twenty or more new titles each month the covers were the main selling point and the three hundred plus reproduced in this book show that you don't mess with a successful formulae. They had to show a female (unless it was for the gay market) as provocatively posed as possible with a two or three word title to complete the package. It has to be said though that the quality of these illustrations is pretty poor which only makes the work of one or two artists really stand out. Robert Bonfils, in particular, consistently turned out quality art and sleaze artists like Stanton, Bilbrew and Bill Ward were made for this market. No cover design could be too tacky for this publishing genre.
The bulk of the book are the cover reproductions (each with date, publisher, author and artist credits) with several short essays in the front. The two about soft core publishing on the East and West coasts were interesting because they actually explain the background to the publishers and more importantly how the books were distributed through the network of adult book stores in most cities and towns. The back has a useful list of publishers and authors pseudonyms. I was slightly disappointed with the books production though, there is no real page design, paragraphs are excessively long and columns just fall short because no one bothered to make adjustments to the picture sizes to compensate. Despite this 'Sin-a-rama' will probably be the only book to comprehensively cover the publishing world of paperback sleaze.
***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.
Because of the very competitive arena in which these publishers worked, with twenty or more new titles each month the covers were the main selling point and the three hundred plus reproduced in this book show that you don't mess with a successful formulae. They had to show a female (unless it was for the gay market) as provocatively posed as possible with a two or three word title to complete the package. It has to be said though that the quality of these illustrations is pretty poor which only makes the work of one or two artists really stand out. Robert Bonfils, in particular, consistently turned out quality art and sleaze artists like Stanton, Bilbrew and Bill Ward were made for this market. No cover design could be too tacky for this publishing genre.
The bulk of the book are the cover reproductions (each with date, publisher, author and artist credits) with several short essays in the front. The two about soft core publishing on the East and West coasts were interesting because they actually explain the background to the publishers and more importantly how the books were distributed through the network of adult book stores in most cities and towns. The back has a useful list of publishers and authors pseudonyms. I was slightly disappointed with the books production though, there is no real page design, paragraphs are excessively long and columns just fall short because no one bothered to make adjustments to the picture sizes to compensate. Despite this 'Sin-a-rama' will probably be the only book to comprehensively cover the publishing world of paperback sleaze.
***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.
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