Celebrate Paperback Book Day Every July 30
July 30 is a day for everyone who still enjoys the feel and smell of a real book. It’s Paperback Book Day.
Sure e-readers and tablets let you carry a whole lot more reading material in a smaller package. And we admit that’s often convenient.
Certainly a digital to-read stack takes up less space than a physical to-read stack. For some of us it’s a lot less space!
But there’s still something about real, paper books.
And the paperback book deserves special mention, along with its own day.
Why? Because it revolutionized reading when it was introduced … Much like the e-reader has done more recently.
July 30 is Paperback Book Day because it’s the anniversary of the day the first Penguin paperbacks were published in 1935 in England.
A Bit of Paperback Book History
Once upon a time the hardcover book was the only way to read “good literature.” But they were expensive (and still are!). Many people couldn’t afford to buy too many, if any at all.
They were also big and bulky (and also still are). So they’re not always easy to read.
Now, paperback books existed before 1935, but they were mostly cheap and poor quality. And so was the writing. No “books of substance” were published in paperback form.
Until Sir Allen Lane had an epiphany.
He decided the reading material available to the average person (magazines and low-quality Victorian paperbacks) was unacceptable. He felt people should be able to get good books more easily and inexpensively. So he started what would become Penguin books.
And the paperback revolution began. Penguin published books by Ernest Hemingway, Agatha Christie and other good fiction authors. People responded by buying some 3 million paperback books in the first 12 months. They paid about the same as for a pack of cigarettes.
America had its own paperback revolution a few years later. Robert Fair de Graff decided books should not only be cheap, they should be small, so they could fit in a pocket and be read anywhere.
The publishing company Simon & Schuster agreed and backed his venture. Pocket Books arrived in May 1939, sized at just 4 x 6 inches and costing just 25 cents. That was a full 10 times cheaper than the average hardcover book, which cost around $2.50.
Pocket books sold 1.5 million books in its first year, with titles from Emily Brontë, Agatha Christie, Shakespeare and others.
Both Penguin and Pocket Books continue publishing today (although not as independent publishers). The ebook has not yet killed the paperback (and we hope it never will).
Scroll down for some ideas on celebrating this unofficial literary holiday.
How to Celebrate Paperback Book Day
Read a paperback book of course!
If you’ve already started on a paperback, keep reading it.
But if you’ve been reading a hardcover or ebooks, put those down at least for one day. Find a paperback in your to-read pile. Or find an old favorite.
No paperback in the house that you want to read? Visit the bookstore. Even better, spend some time exploring the paperbacks in a used book store. Those are magical places.
So, do you still read physical books? Will you be reading a paperback book to celebrate this day?
[…] Paperback Book Day: Relax and dive into a new paperback book to celebrate this day. No, you may not “just finish the last few pages of this hardback” you’ve been reading. Save it for another day. Paperbacks only on July 30! But the genre is all up to you : Mystery, Romance, Horror, Biography, True Crime … whatever your heart desires. […]
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[…] paperback books were rare and mostly poor quality. It wasn’t until Sir Allen Lane made efforts to popularize the paperback book that books became easily accessible to those who wanted to read. He founded Penguin books in 1935 […]