That was very illuminating Charles, (and John from Serpent's
Tail).
I remember the Penguin 60 series well, which might be what
you are talking about when you mention their 'skinny' range
and just found this, from 1995:
On the Sunday Times best-seller list of July 23, the
Penguin 60's took all 10 slots for general nonfiction
paperbacks. The leading title was "Summer," a group of eight
lyrical essays by Albert Camus. Six of the 10 books on the
Sunday Times paperback fiction list are the little
Penguins.
Actually I think it isn't the series you're thinking
of, 60s were tiny; not just skinny but small and square and
cost 60 of our English pence published for Penguin's 60th
anniversary. For that reason they got fantastic publicity and
the list of titles was top notch - I think I bought some
Montaigne essays and tried out Muriel Spark and the like too,
which I probably would not have done without the 'no-risk'
price, the first time I read Maigret and Damon Runyon was in
Penguin 60s. If I remember rightly they did a Sherlock Holmes
story too, and I wonder how many people that turned on to the
full set of stories?
They also had excellent book-store publicity and positioning
(a reflection of Penguin's power and reputation?) and were
very well designed with striking covers and often new
introductions or critical essays.
I remember a couple of other similar ranges appearing
in their wake but I guess they were one-off, loss leaders in
a sense and they certainly haven't been
repeated to my knowledge - in fact, a feature of the
end-of-stock/remaindered bookstore I use most frequently
(which sadly for the health of crime publishing is rammed
with excellent hardboiled authors from classics to Serpant's
Tail and No Exit Press and the like) are stacks and stacks of
Penguin 60s, now available for 25p, so obviously not all of
them sold as well as those top 10 titles mentioned
above.
It really is a shame if authors (as Patrick says) whose
inclination is towards brevity are being asked to pad to
provide a good shelf-filling slab
("Never mind the quality, feel the width," as the old saying
goes). I remember talk at the time of the Penguin 60s even
inclining towards this signalling a revolution in publishing
- people have less time to do anything, least of all read, so
bite-sized literature and stuff-in-a-pocket-books for a
snatched moment (I used to have a pocket full for my hideous
commute on the Piccadilly Line where their manoueverability
was in itself a plus) would be more and more in demand,
apparently not! Although your mention of i-pods reminds me
that music and video seem to have gone that way - see all
those 'the death of the album' articles as people switch to
tracks not discs.
Many of the greats began as short story slingers and I wonder
how far that aided clarity in the shorter form when it came
to novels?
Hey ho.
All the best Avians.
Colin.
(sorry for rambling)
PS, here's something from the Serpent's Tail website which
will surely be required listening for many Avians! (And of
which many of you are no doubt already aware.) Given Cathi
Unsworth's music journalism background there might even be a
soundtrack to savour too - I was played the Gallon
Drunk/Derek Raymond LP once (I was suitably intoxicated at
the time by the way and don't remember too much) and would
love to hear it again.
9 October 2007 Cathi will be hosting four special
programmes on Resonance FM on the late, great Derek Raymond.
THE DARK END OF THE STREET goes out on Resonance 104.4 FM
every Thursday between 7 and 8pm (and repeated every Sunday
from 12 - 1am) from October the 25th 2007. High and low
quality streaming audio available at http://www.resonancefm.com
Podcast available from http://podcasts.resonancefm.com/
in January 2008. THE DARK END OF THE STREET is a special
season of four programmes which will discuss the setting,
language, and literary lineage of Raymond's writing. The
shows go out on Resonance FM from 7-8pm on the night sin
question, details as follows: October 25: Max Decharne
discusses 'The Crust on Its Uppers', Raymond's debut
and a source of Cockney slang from the 1960s. November
1: Serpent's Tail publisher Pete Ayrton and Martyn Waites,
crime writer, discuss 'A State of Denmark'. November 8: John
Williams, Raymond's literary executor and friend
discusses
'He Died with His Eyes Open' November 15: Maxim Jakubowski,
Raymond's agent, proprietor of Murder One crime bookshop in
London, and crime reviewer, discusses 'I Was Dora Suarez',
Raymond's masterpiece.
_http://podcasts.resonancefm.com/_
(http://podcasts.resonancefm.com/)
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