The First 21st Century President

The Founding Fathers of the United States were children of the 18th century.  Even Benjamin Franklin, one of the oldest (born in 1706), was born in the same century in which the U.S. government was founded.  

     George Washington, born in 1732, never lived to see the 19th century, passing away in December 1799, a few weeks before it began.

     Since independence from Britain was not declared until 1776, it's not surprising that no U.S. political leader of the time had been born in the previous century.  The Constitutional requirement that a president be at least 35 years of age also creates some necessary distance in time between when a future president is born and the decade or century he may hold power.

     The 8th president, Martin Van Buren, inaugurated in 1837, was the first U.S. president to be born after 1776.  (He was born in 1782.)  His successor, William Henry Harrison, who died after a month in office, was the last U.S. president born before 1776.  (He was born in 1773.)  

     The first U.S. president to be born in the 19th century was Millard Fillmore, who was born in January 1800.  Fillmore had been vice-president, and became the 13th president in July 1850 after the death of Zachary Taylor.  So, it was not until the 19th century was half over that a person born in that century became president.  

     When Fillmore died in 1874, he and Andrew Johnson (who died the following year) had been the only living ex-presidents.  When Johnson's successor Ulysses S. Grant left office in 1877, Grant found himself to be the only living ex-president.  (Nearly 100 years later, when Richard Nixon left office in 1974, there were also no living former presidents other than himself.)

     Fillmore's successor, Franklin Pierce, was also born in the 19th century (1804), but Pierce's successor was an older man, James Buchanan, who was born in 1791.  Leaving the office in 1861, Buchanan was the last U.S. president to be born in the 18th century.  

     The U.S. Civil War began in 1861, but it was not until 60 years later, when Warren G. Harding was inaugurated in 1921, that the country had a president born after the Civil War.  (Harding was born in 1865, several months after the war ended.)  All of Harding's predecessors had been born before the war started, and all the presidents that followed were, like him, born after it had ended.  (None were born during the war.)

     Just as James Buchanan became the last U.S. president born in the 18th century, when he was inaugurated in 1857, exactly 100 years later Dwight D. Eisenhower (born in 1890) became the last U.S. president born in the 19th century when he was inaugurated (for his second term) in 1957.

     John F. Kennedy, inaugurated in 1961, was the first U.S. president to have been born in the 20th century -- as all subsequent U.S. presidents have been. (He was born in 1917.)

     Kennedy was the first president to have been born in the same century in which he became president since William McKinley (who was born in 1843 and was president from 1897 to 1901).  Like McKinley, Kennedy was assassinated while in office.

     Looking at the above history, we see that it took 50 years in the 19th century for someone born in that century to become president (Millard Fillmore in 1850) and it took 61 years in the 20th century for someone born in that century to become president (John F. Kennedy in 1861).

     If the 21st century conforms to a similar pattern as the previous two centuries, then we can expect that it will not be until 2050 or 2060 that someone born in the 21st century will become president.  Which means that half of the current century will be led by a president whose formative years took place in the previous century.    

     Living through an era, as opposed to reading about it later in a history book, can profoundly shape a person's outlook and identity.  The generation that lived through World War Two, for example, will recall the sacrifices and battles of that time, which were experienced by their fellow countrymen and understood implicitly like a common language that they share.  Over time, as new generations are born, the names of places where battles were fought and lives lost fade from the nation's collective memory, as fewer and fewer among the population were alive to experience them.

     World War Two (1939-1945) was perhaps the most important event of the 20th century.  America's experience in liberating Europe from the Nazis undoubtedly influenced military decisions by American presidents in subsequent decades, usually with less fruitful results.  

     Until 1993, when Bill Clinton was inaugurated, every U.S. president had been born prior to 1925.  Every president since Herbert Hoover had been alive during the Great Depression and World War Two.  Clinton, however, was born in 1946 and his outlook growing up was shaped by the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s.  

     Bill Clinton was the last U.S. president to govern during the 20th century.  His successor, George W. Bush, inaugurated in 2001, was born the same year as Clinton was, 1946.  Donald Trump was also born in 1946.  The three presidents were born within three months of each other: Trump on June 14, Bush on July 6, and Clinton on August 19.  (Two recent nominees who failed to win the presidency, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton, were born the following year, 1947.)

     It's often noted how presidents utilize the technology of their times, such as FDR's mastery of radio with his fireside chats, or JFK's use of television for his press conferences and debates.  The medium of radio and TV were not exactly brand-new inventions, but young and growing industries, and their use by these leaders for political purposes impacted how they would be used by those that followed.  Indeed, a media-savvy presence would become essential for political success, culminating in the election of a former movie and TV star as president in 1980 with Ronald Reagan.

     Social media on the internet is a uniquely 21st century innovation that has also taken on a dominant role in political discourse, influencing (and even originating) news coverage.  Twitter was founded in 2006, and citizen/celebrity Donald Trump created an account on the site in 2009.  Given the media's use of Twitter in the formation of their news stories, Trump was able to use the site as a way of sending unfiltered messages to the public while simultaneously remaining in the media spotlight.  This was very much a 21st century phenomenon, and it could be argued that Trump was the first true "21st century president" (no matter the year of his birth) by exploiting this new method of communication.

     However, we are only 21 years into the 21st century -- at a point comparable when Warren G. Harding became the first post-Civil War president in 1921 -- and there's no telling how the rest of the 21st century will look.  It's just possible that it may look more like Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama.

     Obama, America's first African-American president, was unlike any president before or since, due to his racial identity.  He was also born more recently (1961) than the others, and will become only 60 years old later this year.  For Obama, the events of the Great Depression and World War Two are even more remote than they were for his fellow baby boomers Clinton, GWB and Trump, all born in 1946.  "Baby boomers" is the term for those people born between 1946 and 1964, a group which also includes the current Vice-President Kamala Harris (if not President Joe Biden himself, who was born in 1942).  

     Kamala Harris was born in 1964.  It seems reasonable to assume that at some point she will run for the presidency, and if so would likely be a strong frontrunner given her current position as vice-president.  (Harris ran in 2019, but dropped out before any votes were cast.)  As president, she would not only be the second African-American president, but the first woman to be president.  As the demographics of the country become more diverse, a president that reflects such diversity would be more representative of the century in which they live, and more important a factor than whether they use Twitter or not. 

 

   Another prominent female politician these days is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, born in 1989.  Like Trump, she has used social media to enhance her visibility and voice.  AOC (as she is known) also has a Puerto Rican heritage, an ethnic background than reflects the country's growing diversity.  Currently only 31 years old, AOC would turn 35 on October 13, 2024, which means that if she ran for president she would meet the Constitutional requirement of being 35 years or older when taking office. (The 2024 election will take place on November 5, 2024.)

     If such a thing happened, she would be the youngest person to ever hold the office of U.S. president.  (At age 42, Teddy Roosevelt was the youngest person to become president, assuming office upon the death of President McKinley.)  Nonetheless, a President AOC would still be a "20th century" person leading the country in the 21st century.  Nearly one-third of her life would have been lived in the previous century.  

     Whoever becomes the Millard Fillmore or John F. Kennedy of the 21st century (i.e., the first president to be born in the same century in which they became president), it would have to be someone born after the year 1999.  This unknown person is currently 21 years old or younger, and (as noted earlier) will likely not become president until 2050 or later.  Constitutionally, they could not even run for president until 2035 at the earliest. Which means we probably have another 30 to 40 years of presidents who were born in the 20th century until that happens.

     However, I suspect it will happen sooner than 2050.  In the past, experience in either governing or military leadership were considered important factors in the election of a president.  Recent history has shown these qualities to be less important -- and perhaps even disadvantages -- than in the past.  For example, both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama won their respective elections against opponents with admirable military backgrounds (Bush, Dole, McCain).  Donald Trump was the first president to be elected who was neither a politician nor military leader.  

     The most important factor in winning elections may simply be an ability to create favorable impressions of one's self, which is the guiding principle of social media sites like Instagram (founded in 2010).  The power to control the narrative, to manipulate the populace's understanding of reality in the promotion of one's own ends, has long been important in politics, as mentioned above regarding FDR on radio and JFK on TV.  

     Using the "bully pulpit" (a phrase coined by Teddy Roosevelt) to achieve one's goals is nothing new.  But now each person has their own online pulpit in which to spread their gospel, in the hope of winning converts to their cause, regardless of whether the message is literally true or not.  A polarized electorate chooses sides in the manner of watching a football game, based on traditional loyalties, their interest maintained by commercial hype and the dramatic action on the playing field.  The bolder the play, the bigger the cheer from the crowd, and the greater the media exposure.  

     Politics is now just another sporting event, just another movie premiere, just another viral meme, for a shallow and bored public.  It's possible that a future president, the product of such a culture, could debase the office in ways unimaginable, even to those who have lived through Watergate, through the Clinton sex scandals, and through the reckless rhetoric of Trump.  I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the future holds, and hope for the best.

Early use of the abbreviation "HEA" when discussing Romance Novels

The abbreviation "HEA" (which stands for Happily Ever After) is regularly mentioned by romance novel readers when discussing the genre.  A romance novel that lacks a HEA is usually considered not only a disappointment, but not even a romance novel.  This is because one of the requirements of a book marketed as a "romance novel" is that it must have a happy ending for the main characters (the lovers) that are the subject of the book.  

     Because sequels and series have become so popular and prevalent, the abbreviation "HFN" (Happy For Now) is allowed as an alternative to the HEA, in order to fulfill the romance novel's requirement of a happy ending.  The HFN indicates that within the book in which their love story is featured, the romantic partners will be together and happy by the end of the book.  HFN does not guarantee eternal bliss for the main characters of the first book in the next book of the series, however, or in other books down the line.

     But where did the phrase "HEA" come from?  

     From my examination of 1980s issues of Romantic Times, I was unable to find a mention of the abbreviation "HEA" within their pages.  A happy ending was understood to be the desired ending of any romance novel, but the shorthand word "HEA" itself -- so ubiquitous today when discussing romance novels -- was nowhere to be found (at least that I saw in my perusal of the issues I have).  

     The earliest example that I found of the word "HEA" in print was in Romantic Times #93 (Dec. 1991).  Shown below is the top half of the article by author Bobbi Smith titled "EQ = HEA²" (presumably a pun on Einstein's famous "E = MC²" equation).  The "EQ" in the article stands for the "Emotion Quotient" -- a romance novel's ability to "touch our readers' hearts and make them 'feel' what our characters are feeling."  (You can read the article in its entirety here.)

     For the rest of the 1990s, however, the word "HEA" seems not to have appeared in the pages of Romantic Times.  Readers were said to favor "happy endings," and authors would declare "we read romances always for the guarantee of happily-ever-after" (RT #134, May 1995; p. 13), but the shorthand term "HEA" was not used.  (Of course, it's possible I simply missed such a reference, or don't have access to it.  If you do know of the abbreviation "HEA" being used in a 20th century book or periodical, please let me know.)

     The internet was known early on for its unique abbreviations ("LOL" being perhaps the most famous) and so I suspected that "HEA" may have been the result of internet discussion about romance novels.  

     The earliest reference to "HEA" that I have been able to find online was in a post by author Jo Beverely (1947-2016) on the newsgroup RRA-L (Romance Readers Anonymous-List) on March 20, 1994 (screencap below), replying to another member about happy endings:

     In the above post, Beverley is writing about how different types of readers respond to a book's ending.  The "HEA" reader is one who may question whether the couple will be able to sustain their relationship, despite the happy note on which the book ends.  

     In the thread replying to Jo Beverley's post, other readers chimed in saying whether they considered themselves "HE" or "HEA" type readers.  

     On March 24, 1994, Jo Beverley posted a reply regarding the responses that she had received to her post about the "HE" and "HEA" wherein she clarified what she meant by "HEA."  Even if the novel had an epilogue showing the couple happy, if the outcome was not convincing that their love would overcome future obstacles, then it was merely an "HE."  "HEA is a feeling I get at the end of a book, epilogue or not,"  she wrote. "HE is for me when this feeling isn't there, and I've experienced it even with epilogues showing them happy."

     This definition, then, is a more subjective determination, based on the willingness of the reader to accept the happy ending. In this early discussion of "HEA," it was more about the reader and her response to the likely permanence of the happy ending rather than whether the book had a happy ending or not.  

     To give an example from my own reading experience, in a review of a Harlequin Presents novel a couple years ago, I wrote the following: "Sure, they get it all resolved 10 pages before the novel ends. But realistically, what kind of stable relationship could two such distrustful people have in real life? One can imagine the same miscommunication problems happening again, destroying their relationship."  So, in that instance, the book had a happy ending, but failed to reassure me that (as Beverley put it) their "love will endure and that this couple can handle life and stick together." I was not convinced that the couple's issues were truly resolved and that the problems they had in the rest of the novel wouldn't come up again in the future, potentially ruining their happiness.

     However, "HE" and "HEA" were subsequently discussed by others in relation to the book (not the reader) and "HEA" would become shorthand for whether a work could be considered a romance or not.  In May 1994, there was discussion on the list about the 1992 novel The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller, where the lack of an "HE" and "HEA" indicated that it was not a romance novel.

     On the newsgroup, "HEA" was often used as shorthand to indicate a happy ending (and thus a romance novel) while "HE" disappeared.  In practice, it appears that "HE" was eventually replaced by "HFN," although that particular abbreviation doesn't show up in my searches of RRA-L posts, and I don't know when "HFN" became regularly used.  

     In her column on online romance in Romantic Times #119 (Feb. 1994), Cathie Linz noted that "New technologies create new words.  Just as each generation has its own catchwords, computer bulletin board users have developed a language of their own."  Examples that she gave included "BBB" (book buying binge), BHA ("BookHoarders Anonymous") and IMHO ("In my honest opinion"), but not "HEA."  (Actually, IMHO stands for "in my humble opinion," as a RRA-L member posted on March 17, 1994.) 

     Occasionally the meaning of such abbreviations was posted about on the RRA-L, but HEA was not listed among them until the following post in January 1997.

     By the mid-to-late 1990s, conversations and activity gradually drifted from the text-based newsgroups to the image-oriented WorldWideWeb, with many authors, publishers and readers setting up webpages relating to the romance genre.  Since Oct. 2020, with the demise of Yahoo Groups, the RRA-L can be found on the groups.io site (which operates similarly to Yahoo Groups).

     The first installment of Laurie's News & Views, from March 1, 1996, included a survey question asking visitors whether a romance novel had to include an HEA.  So far this is the earliest reference to "HEA" that I've seen on a webpage (as opposed to a newsgroup post).

     The webpage was produced by Laurie Gold who went on to found the All About Romance website.  She mentions that debate about the issue was occurring on the RRA-L newsgroup.  Her inclusion of the abbreviation "HEA" after the phrase "Happily ever after" suggests familiarity with its use, even though the inclusion of an abbreviation seems unnecessary here since it only appears once.  (In these screencaps, I have highlighted the instances where the word "HEA" appears, to make it easier to see at a glance. You can click on the image to view it larger.)

     In the second installment, dated March 17, 1996, Laurie provided the results of her survey, showing that most readers preferred a "Happily Every After (HEA)."

     A year later, in installment #27 (June 4, 1997), Laurie raised the topic of the HEA again.  Although she again provided the meaning for what the letters stood for, the presence of the abbreviation is far more prevalent here than in the previous installments.  As highlighted by me here, we can see that the word "HEA" appeared 7 times.  So, it's safe to say that by 1997, "HEA" had already become familiar shorthand for readers discussing the content of romance novels. 

     The webpage published the comments of many authors and readers on the subject of the HEA, which can be read here.  Even back in 1997, a HEA was considered "essential" and "required" for a love story to be considered romance by most of the genre's readers.  

     And yet, for something so "simple," the HEA component of romance novels continues to this day to be a topic of debate on internet message forums, from Twitter to Facebook to romance fiction websites.  Through the years, even the definition of what constitutes a HEA (for example, marriage and/or children) has changed.

     The HEA can be used by readers to determine not only whether a book ought to be read, but whether an individual ought to be trusted.  Too often media commentators will recommend or reference novels that lack the HEA as "romance novels," and the simple act of doing so exposes their lack of understanding of the genre.  

     Or, to quote another popular variation of the HEA abbreviation: "HEA or GTFO."

My History as a Capfan

I recently joined a FB group called "Captain America Comic Book Fans" about the Marvel Comics character.  One nice thing about this group is that the focus is squarely on the comics, not the movies, etc.  The reason I joined is that they have been having a bracket where Cap artists who had long runs on the title are voted on, to eventually determine fans' favorite.  The names are lined up alphabetically, so right away there was a major decision to be made with Sal Buscema vs. John Byrne, two Capfan-favorites. (I went with Byrne.) Right now it is Ron Garney vs. Butch Guice, which is an easier choice for me since I find Garney's art frequently sloppy and unappealing, and I have enjoyed Guice's art since the late 1990s (I wasn't a fan of his 1980s art).  But looks like Garney is winning that round.

     Anyway, what brings me to post this is the board's interesting banner (shown above), which shows the top left corner of the covers from the 1940s to 2018.  The first image shown is actually Joe Simon's original concept sketch of the character. The one next to that (with Cap in a circle) is from a 1940s issue.  We then jump ahead to the first issue (#100) of Cap getting his own solo series in 1968 (after having spent the previous four years sharing "Tales of Suspense" with Iron Man). Then we have #150 (from 1972) and the Bicentennial issue #200 (1976, shown at left) during Jack Kirby's 1970s run as writer-artist-editor. All of these Silver-Age and Bronze-Age comics I obtained as back issues circa 1980-82; the first issue of Cap that I bought brand-new was #229 (Jan. 1979) which came out around the time that I turned 8 years old. (I wrote a previous blog post about the earliest comics that I read and bought which can be read here.)

     After that on the banner we see the corner symbol for #250 (Oct. 1980), during the great Stern-Byrne run.  By this time, I considered myself a collector of the series, and had a letter printed in #255 asking a continuity question about past depictions of Cap's origin. I got a mail subscription by #260, during Mike Zeck's run (which I enjoyed), but by #300 (Dec. 1984) my tastes were changing and I did the unthinkable and stopped "collecting" the series. #300 was the last issue of my subscription, and I didn't buy another issue of it until a year later, #312 (Dec. 1985), which was the 6th issue of Mark Gruenwald's lengthy run as the book's writer.  At first I enjoyed the series again, but by the #330's, during the storyline where Cap became "The Captain" and was replaced by another Captain America, I felt like the comic was repeating past glories and doing them less well, so I started buying it more infrequently.  I dropped it with #337 (Jan. 1988) and didn't buy it again until #349 (Jan. 1989) because I liked the Kirbyesque cover. If I recall right, my friend Matt sent me #350, but I hated most of the art inside. 

     On May 14, 1989 (when I was age 18), I wrote in a letter to Matt that I went "into 7-11 & purchase X-Men #247, JLA #27, Cap #356, Iron Man Annual #10, & Action Annual #2. The Action Comic annual looks okay. The Cap comic looks real good, Milgrom made his art look like Simon-Kirby. The X-Men & JLA look okay I guess. The Iron Man Annual looks really dumb, 'cos it's part of a continuing story! Aargh! I'm sending you all of them except the Cap one. God, what a waste of money."  Until reading the letter again years later, I had forgotten that I'd bought those other comics in addition to Cap #256 (cover-dated Aug. 1989).

     I was disturbed, however, by the violence in #256, as I shared with Matt in a letter on May 17, 1989: "Here's what's in my latest Cap: young boy kneed in the groin, boy then beaten on back with a stick, young girl hit in stomach by stick, villainess kicked in stomach, children locked in dark cages, villainess kicked in head, dirt flung in face, lines like "Drugs are your friend! Don't let anyone stand between you and a high! Violence is your right!", a group of children murder an innocent man, throwing his body into a fire, young girl gets her neck broken in full panel view by a group of villains who then laugh about it. And then for 4 pages a Captain America without his super-serum body is beaten in the head, in the back, in the hand, in the throat, on the face (not counting 2 pgs. where he's tied up, punched twice & then injected drugs with a syringe), punched in the face, punched by 5 different villainesses at once, kneed in the stomach, & again pounded on simultaneously by the villainesses & in the final panel the 17-year old Cap, weak, unconscious, is gripped by the hair about to be given "one last killing blow!" & that's where the story ends. Whatever happened to the hero winning in the end??"

     So, not surprisingly, I didn't buy another issue of Captain America again until after writer Mark Gruenwald left the book. Which is too bad, I realize now, since I think I would have enjoyed "The Bloodstone Hunt" backup series that began in the very next issue.  Gru stayed on the book for years and years, though -- his last issue was #443.  So, when I happened to see both #444 and #445 (Oct. & Nov. 1995) at the local Waldenbooks, and noticed that they were NOT written by Mark Gruenwald (but by Mark Waid), I bought them.  After all, this was the first chance to read a new issue of Cap that wasn't written by Gruenwald since 1985!  

     Unfortunately, I was less than impressed by both the writing (Waid) and the art (Ron Garney, see above). I particularly didn't like how Waid had brought back Sharon Carter, who died in #233 (and her death confirmed in #237) since I had long felt that Bernie Rosenthal, a normal person, as Cap's girlfriend was more likely to keep the character rooted in real-world problems rather than sci-fi adventures. (Of course Marvel had ended up having Bernie participate in Cap's adventures going back to DeMatteis' run, defeating any attempts at presenting a more realistic character.)  So I think I didn't buy another Cap after that.  I saw the distorted, ugly Garney cover of #448, which supported my decision not to buy the comic anymore.  Which didn't matter anyway, because the series was "cancelled" soon after with #454 (Aug. 1996), which I recall seeing on the shelf at the time.  

     I might have seen that final issue (#454) at a comics convention, in fact, because I had begun going to those regularly with Matt starting around this time, in an attempt to buy all the old comics that I hadn't been able to buy when I was younger.  I already had most of the Cap issues from #100 to #300, which I had gotten in the early 1980s when I was collecting the series.  But now since the series had an end point (#454) I figured that I'd fill the holes in my Cap collection between #301 and #454, just to have the whole run -- especially since I kept finding them in the cheap boxes where I was buying most of my back issues anyway.  Eventually I got almost all of them -- looking at my list, it appears that I'm missing only three issues  (#323, 447 and 454) to have #100 through #454.  (But my list might be a little out of date, so it's possible I have gotten them since.) 

     A rebooted Cap series (with a new #1) began in late 1996, initially drawn by Rob Liefeld, but I stayed away.  It ran 13 issues, until Cap was given a new #1 (Jan. 1998) that featured the return of Waid & Garney, who a lot of fans on the internet felt had been unfairly shoved aside during their previous run to make room for Liefeld's less critically-appreciated reboot. By 1997 I had home access to the internet and was participating in comics message boards, including the Cap board at Alvaro's.  I even had the experience of emailing 1970s Cap writer Steve Englehart to ask him a question about something in his run that I had wondered about (specifically whether The Falcon had murdered a character while under the control of the Red Skull).  

     My involvement on comics message boards, and the ease with which I was able to obtain comics at a nearby comics shop located only a 20-minute walk away (where I got a "pull list" for the first time) led to me buying new comic books again.  So I started buying Cap again with the new #1 (Jan. 1998) and didn't a miss a single issue (I had a pull list after all) until the series ended with #50 (Feb. 2002).  I had really begun to enjoy the series again during the run of writer-artist Dan Jurgens (#33-50), during which time Cap had gotten a normal, non-superheroic girlfriend again (lawyer Connie Ferrari).  But unfortunately Marvel decided to reboot the series again, under the "Marvel Knights" imprint, with a new #1 (June 2002).  This gave me a good "jumping-off" point, so I didn't buy the series again for the next couple years.

     The "Marvel Knights" Cap series ended with #32 (Dec. 2004).  So when it was rebooted again with #1 (Jan. 2005) by writer Ed Brubaker and artist Steve Epting (whose work I already liked), I gave it a shot and loved their run.  Even with the killing off of Jack Monroe (Nomad) and the return of Bucky Barnes (as Winter Soldier) and the prominence of SHIELD and over-the-top espionage story arcs (instead of Cap dealing with real-world issues, which is what I always prefer to see) -- despite all that, I loved it, and kept buying the series through the rest of Bru's run as writer (which eventually included Butch Guice as artist, who I also liked).  

     I kept buying Cap even after Brubaker & Guice left, and the series numbering went through some weird variations, such as a short-lived retitling of the series to "Captain America and Bucky."  And I continued to buy the series when it was rebooted with a new #1 (Jan. 2013) by a new creative team, writer Rick Remender (whose work I didn't know) and artists John Romita Jr. & Klaus Janson (whose work I was familiar with & had enjoyed).  In August 2012, I posted on Facebook (before seeing the first issue): "I've bought Captain America every month without fail since 2005 when Ed Brubaker began writing the series.  Ed has left, so it makes sense to renumber again and start anew, but this new series does not look appealing to me.  I'll probably try the first issue to give it a chance, but it looks like this may be a 'dropping-out' point for me."

     I gave the new series a try and even shared a page from the 2nd issue on my FB wall in Jan. 2013, writing: "I had my doubts about whether I'd continue buying new issues of CAPTAIN AMERICA because of the recent creative team change, as I posted about here on my FB wall a while back. I'm happy to report that the series will be staying on my pull list. The writing and art are different, but really good. Even the coloring is great!"

     However, the science-fiction slant of the storyline I found unappealing and I dropped the series a couple issues later.  That was the last time (2013, by which time I was 42 years old) that I bought the series brand-new off the shelf.  In July 2014, when I read about a new development in the series I wrote the following: "Good Lord, not again. I dropped Captain America when it was renumbered in 2013, after having faithfully bought every issue since 2005.  I dropped it with #4 or so, having given the new writer a good try.  I liked the first two issues, as a change of pace, but the direction that he was going was not appealing (and I see from the below news that 'Dimension Z' is still part of the narrative). Now we once again have the 'replacement Cap' storyline, which has been done multiple times during the character's history, which always results in Steve Rogers eventually returning to the role.  (As he should.  Steve Rogers IS Captain America.  Do readers need to find that out yet again?) Far from causing me to want to pick up an issue, this has 'you can ignore this entire story arc' written all over it."  

     This was followed by a "Captain America: Sam Wilson" series that ran 24 issues, from #1 (Dec. 2015) to #24 (Sept. 2017).  (There was also a concurrent "Captain America: Steve Rogers" series that ran 19 issues.) Although I'm a longtime fan of The Falcon (Sam Wilson), I prefer him as The Falcon, and particularly prefer him as someone dealing with down-to-earth matters, not more sci-fi, espionage, etc.  So I didn't buy this series.  It was renamed "Captain America" with #25 (Oct. 2017) when Steve Rogers became Cap again, and the next issue (#695, Jan. 2018) restored the series' original numbering.  (The top left corner of #695 is shown in the Facebook group's banner as the most recent image.)  Mark Waid returned as the book's writer, and the artist was Chris Samnee, whose simplified Alex Toth-esque art I had enjoyed previously on Daredevil (also written by Waid).  I didn't buy the series brand-new, but I did pick up a few issues (#696, 697, perhaps others) when I saw them for dirt-cheap shortly afterwards in a cheap bin at a comics shop that would soon go out of business.  This series was surprisingly short-lived, ending with #704 (Aug. 2018).

     The series was rebooted again with a new #1 (Sept. 2018) in a run written by political commentator and author Ta-Nehisi Coates.  I was tempted to start buying Cap again because of Coates being the writer, since I've enjoyed his columns online, but I've not regularly bought a new comics series from either Marvel or DC since around 2013, so I ended up avoiding Coates' run as well.  The series was given dual numbering with #9 (#713 overall) for those fans who want to collect everything from #100 (in 1968) to the present. (I'm no longer one of those folks.)

     The pandemic slowed down production of all comics, and so there was a gap between #20 (#724, May 2020) and #21 (#725, Oct. 2020).  The series is currently somewhere around issue #28, and as far as I know, Coates is still writing it.  

     Anyway, there's my history of buying Captain America comics -- thoughts which were prompted by seeing the glimpses of past covers.

A Family Tree of Paperback Book Publishers

If this was a TV documentary, instead of a blog post, it might begin with a cinematic montage showing paperback book publishers' brand icons as they appear on their books' spines. We don't have that kind of budget here, so we'll begin with a photo I took recently of my bookshelf (click to enlarge) showing a variety of publisher colophons (as they are called). Additional colophons are shown below, as I write about each publisher, with the understanding that they are being presented here under fair use laws related to providing information and criticism about the subject. (No one should think that I'm somehow associated with or published by any of the mentioned publishers. I'd love to be, but I'm not.)

The following post is a brief look at the history of some of the more prominent mass-market paperback book publishers -- the companies that publish the small softcover books (usually no larger than 5" x 7") that you can find today on the shelves of your local drugstore, supermarket or big-box retailer. Such books are normally sold on a returnable basis, pulled from the shelves by the vendor after a limited time; the covers on unsold copies are usually torn off and returned to receive credit from the distributor, with an "S" in a triangle on the back cover indicating its "strippable" status. This post's focus is on U.S. paperback publishers, although there are a few non-U.S. ones mentioned as well. I may occasionally update this post as I discover new information. This post was last updated on March 31, 2021 at 12:35pm.

There will undoubtedly be some errors or omissions here, and if you find any, you can let me (and everyone else) know in the comments section at the bottom. Occasionally I found conflicting information and had to decide which version (usually involving a specific year) was correct, or perhaps I forgot (or never knew) something that another reader may consider important and worth mentioning. By necessity I had to use some information found on Wikipedia, which provided a lot of details about the history of various mergers and acquisitions over the years. So, what you read below will inevitably be a heavily-simplified and imperfect account. At any rate, I hope that you will find the following post useful as a general overview about the topic, and that it may give you a greater appreciation of the long history of some of the publishers releasing paperback books today. Enjoy!

The history of certain long-running paperback book publishing houses fascinates me. Recently I read a new romance novel by a popular publisher of mass-market paperbacks, Grand Central Publishing, and I wondered how long they had been around. The imprint of this particular Grand Central book was "Forever," a name that I had seen on older romance novels, too. 

Looking it up online, it turns out that Grand Central used to be Warner Books, which of course I was familiar with and have several of their older paperbacks on my shelves. (The logo below is scanned from one of them.)  Warner introduced the "Warner Forever" imprint in 2003, and in 2006 Time Warner sold Warner Books to Hachette Livre.  In 2007, Hachette renamed Warner Books as Grand Central Publishing. 

This reminded me of my collecting of novels by Kathleen Norris; her 1920s-50s books were reprinted by Paperback Library in the mid-to-late 1960s. The company was founded in 1961 and is perhaps best known for its series of Dark Shadows novels (written by Dan Ross under the pen-name Marilyn Ross).

By 1972, the Kathleen Norris books -- still using the same cover design -- were now said to be published by "Warner Paperback Library" since Warner Communications (then known as Kinney National) purchased Paperback Library in 1970.  Eventually the "Paperback Library" name was phased out, but who owns it now?  When you type in "Paperback Library" on Wikipedia, it redirects you to "Hachette Book Group," but a footnote there says it wasn't acquired by Hachette, per "personal correspondence" in 2020. Hmmm....

A similar story, with a similar name, was another 1960s paperback publisher called Popular Library, which was co-founded in 1942 by Ned Pines, known to fans of Golden-Age comics as the publisher of Standard Comics. Popular's pinetree-shaped cover icon (shown at left) was fashioned after Pines' own name. In 1971, Popular Library was sold to CBS, who in 1976 bought another publisher with a comics connection, Fawcett. Fawcett was a prominent paperback book publisher with imprints like Fawcett Crest and Fawcett Gold Medal, and in the late 1970s Fawcett Popular Library was added to these, reflecting the acquisition of Popular Library. CBS Publications sold Fawcett to Ballantine Books in 1982 after the U.S. Justice Department ordered CBS to divest itself of Fawcett due to concerns that it would create a monopoly. (Oh, how times have changed!) However, Popular Library was sold separately -- to Warner Communications. Yes, that's right -- the same company mentioned earlier that bought Paperback Library now owned Popular Library as well. In 1985, Warner Books revived Popular Library, but the brand was eliminated in 1991 and remains defunct. Does Hachette own Popular Library now, since its 2006 purchase of Warner Books?

Speaking of Fawcett, its obscure fate seems to me particularly unfortunate since its brand was once so well known. As noted above, Ballantine acquired Fawcett in 1982. From the 1970s to the 1990s, Fawcett had published a regular line of traditional Regency romance novels, but that ended in 1998. According to Wikipedia (which doesn't provide a source): "The imprint stopped being used on new books at the beginning of the 21st century." Presumably Ballantine (which is owned by Random House, which is owned by Bertelsmann) still owns Fawcett, but has decided not to use it for some reason. Why buy it and not use it?

A 2002 Publishers Weekly article explains that Ballantine Books had been founded in 1952, acquired by Random House in 1973, and that Random House in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann in 1998. "Gina Centrello became president and publisher in March 1999," the article notes, and "Centrello has also given the different imprints more specific identities. Fawcett focuses on mysteries, and Ivy Books is devoted solely to publishing mass market paperback romance titles." In the 1970s, the Ballantine imprint Beagle Books published romance novels, including a numbered line of books by the Australian writer Lucy Walker.

Another Ballantine imprint is Del Rey Books (founded in 1977 by Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey) which publishes science fiction and fantasy. For decades, Del Rey has published numerous original Star Wars novels, beginning in 1978 with Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster, the first time that any of the Star Wars characters appeared in prose fiction outside of the novelization of the movie itself (which Ballantine had also published -- at the end of 1976, half a year before the movie came out). As a teenager in the 1980s, I recall Del Rey Books for the H. P. Lovecraft paperbacks that I bought at bookstores like B. Dalton.

If you go to the Wikipedia page for Random House, you'll find this mind-boggling sentence: "In 1998, Bertelsmann AG bought Random House and merged it with Bantam Doubleday Dell and it soon went global." Yep, "Bantam Doubleday Dell" -- which you and I will remember as individual publishers back in the day. The Wikipedia page goes on to say, "In October 2012, Bertelsmann entered into talks with rival conglomerate Pearson plc, over the possibility of combining their respective publishing companies, Random House and Penguin Group. The merger was completed on July 1, 2013, and the new company is Penguin Random House." Recently Bertelsmann announced its intention to purchase Simon & Schuster (whose paperback imprints include Pocket Books) for $2.2 billion.

So, let's mull over that eye-popping phrase "Bantam Doubleday Dell" again. What the heck happened there?

Doubleday is the oldest of the three, founded in 1897. In 1948, Doubleday started a paperback book imprint called Permabooks, but sold it to Pocket Books in 1954. Growing up I had always assumed that Doubleday was related to paperback publisher Signet since Stephen King's hardcover novels were published by Doubleday and the paperback editions published by Signet, but apparently the two companies were unrelated. According to its Wikipedia page, "In 2009 Doubleday merged with Knopf Publishing Group to form the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which is now part of Penguin Random House. In 2019, the official website presents Doubleday as an imprint, not a publisher."

Dell has long been one of my favorite paperback publishers, especially for their 1960s editions that have a nice compact size. Like Fawcett, Dell had also published comic books and magazines. They began publishing paperback books in 1943, and until 1951 the back covers featured maps that are popular with collectors. Dell's paperbacks prior to the 1980s often had green page edges. To compete with Harlequin, Dell had their own similar Candelight Romance line, beginning in 1967. According to its Wikipedia page, "Dell Publishing no longer exists as an independent entity. Dell was acquired by Doubleday in 1976. Doubleday was acquired by Bertelsmann in 1986, who formed Bantam Doubleday Dell as its US subsidiary. Bertelsmann acquired Random House in 1998 and renamed its US business after the acquisition. After the merger, Bantam was merged with Dell Publishing." Mass-market paperback editions of bestselling authors such as Danielle Steel, John Grisham, and Lee Child are still published today under the Dell imprint, so (unlike Fawcett) the Dell name is not totally dead, but it no longer has a particularly unique identity that distinguishes it from other publishers.

Bantam Books was co-founded in 1945 by Ian and Betty Ballantine who, as you may suspect from their last name, later went on to found Ballantine Books in 1952. Just as Pocket Books are easily identifiable by their kangaroo mascot Gertrude, Bantam had a bantam rooster on their spines. Growing up in the 1980s, I often saw mass-market paperbacks of classic literature under the "A Bantam Classic" banner. In the 1990s Bantam published the romance line Bantam Fanfare and the science fiction line Bantam Spectra. In 1976, Doubleday bought Dell and shortly afterwards Bertelsmann acquired Bantam. In 1986, Bertelsmann bought Doubleday, which became Bantam Doubleday Dell. Random House had already acquired Ballantine Books in 1973, so that meant when Bertelsmann acquired Random House in 1998 they got Ballantine as well. The formerly individual publishers Ballantine, Bantam, Dell, Doubleday, and Random House were now all owned by one huge company, Bertelsmann. In recent years Bertelsmann added Penguin Books to their acquisitions, which is now known as Penguin Random House with (as noted above) plans to add Simon & Schuster to the group as well. Bantam, Dell and Del Rey have since adopted a "house" image as their colophons, to reflect their relationship within Random House. (So, in other words, the rooster croaked.)

If you visit the official website of Penguin Random House and view the page there listing their various imprints, you will find them placed in certain divisions. The "Random House" grouping contains the imprints discussed above -- Ballantine, Bantam, Del Rey, Dell, Random House -- as well as Broadway Books (represented on their books' spines with a stylized "B\D\W\Y"), which is an imprint of Crown; Dial Press, Loveswept (an e-book revival of Bantam's fondly-remembered 1980s-90s category romance line) and many others. The "Penguin Publishing Group" on the same page contains Penguin Books (a prestigious British company founded in 1935) as well as Berkley, DAW (science fiction & fantasy publisher founded by Donald A. Wollheim in 1971), G. P. Putnam's Sons (founded in 1838; these days their paperbacks simply say "Putman" on the spines with the full name of the company inside), Viking (which, like Doubleday, also published Stephen King's early novels) and others. "The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group" listed on the page includes more prestige imprints such as Anchor Books and Vintage Books (who also publish mass-market paperbacks, although fewer than most of the others on this list).

Some of the above imprints have their own convoluted histories. Berkley Books was a mass-market paperback book publishing company founded in 1955 (also sometimes called Berkley Medallion) that was later acquired by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1965. The latter's Wikipedia page states: "MCA bought Putnam Publishing Group and Berkley Publishing Group in 1975." In 1982, Putnam acquired another large publisher, Grosset & Dunlap, as well as Playboy's paperback book division Playboy Press (which had published historical romance novels). In more recent years, the Berkley Prime Crime imprint offered cozy mystery novels, and the Berkley Sensation imprint has published paranormal romance novels by authors such as Nalini Singh.

     Another publisher that wound up in the same company was Ace Books, founded in 1952 and well-remembered for their science fiction double novels (where you would turn the book around to read another novel, with its own cover).  Ace also published a lot of gothic romance novels, many of them with the phrase "First in Gothics" on the cover, as well as numerous nurse novels. Grosset & Dunlap acquired Ace Books in 1972, and in 1976 acquired Charter Communications as well (perhaps best-remembered for the Nick Carter Killmaster series in the 1980s). In more recent years, Roc Books has been associated with Ace as an imprint of Berkley. According to Wikipedia, "When Putnam bought Grosset & Dunlap and Playboy Press, the Ace and Playboy Press paperback lists were added to that of Berkley; the Playboy list was eventually absorbed into Berkley, while the Jove and Ace lists have continued as distinct imprints."

Okay, so that brings us to Jove Books, which I'd not yet mentioned. It all starts with Pyramid Books, a paperback book publisher founded in 1949. In the 1960s, Pyramid published a lot of gothic romance novels (which is how I knew about them). As Jove's Wikipedia page explains, Pyramid "was acquired in 1974 by Harcourt Brace (which became Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) which renamed it to Jove in 1977 and continued the line as an imprint. In 1979, they sold it to The Putnam Berkley Group, which is now part of the Penguin Group." So, this is why the 1980s Second Chance at Love line, for example, is said to be published by "Berkley/Jove" inside.

Jove Books is still around today, offering the paperback books of authors like Mary Balogh and Christine Feehan, but you'd pretty much never know it from looking online. Jove is not listed on the page for its imprints at the official Penguin Random House website, for example (although it is included in a lengthy scroll of text here), nor mentioned as an imprint of Berkley on the site's page for Berkley either. On bibliographical sites like Fantastic Fiction, the publisher is usually listed as Berkley, with no mention of Jove. Unlike Grand Central's "Forever" imprint, which has the "Forever" name on the spine, only the Berkley name appears on the spines of current Jove books. But if you look inside the book, the title page will note that it is "A Jove Book," followed by "Published by Berkley," and then "An imprint of Random House LLC." So, Jove has gone from being a publisher itself to barely an imprint, and one that is almost invisible these days when it comes to promotion of its brand.

Ace and Jove are not the only publishers that seem to have a less visible presence since they became imprints of Berkley. New American Library (NAL for short) was a once-prominent publisher founded in 1948, with paperback book imprints such as the popular Signet Books (which had its own imprints like Signet Classics that reprinted great literature and the long-running Signet Regency Romance line) and the educational Mentor Books. Some of NAL's now-defunct imprints of the 1990s include Onyx (which, despite what it says at the link, also published romance) and Topaz (historical romance). Berkley still owns them, but ain't doing much with them, it seems.

Understandably, given all of the above acquisitions, Penguin Random House is considered one of "the big five" book publishers. The other four in the "big five" are Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins, and Macmillan. And all of "the big five" have well-known mass-market paperback book imprints. So, we'll take a look at those below.

As mentioned earlier, Simon & Schuster owns Pocket Books, which was the first U.S. paperback book publisher, founded in 1939. In 1959, the Washington Square Press imprint began, devoted to classic literature; it is still with Simon & Schuster today, as an imprint of their Atria division. In 1967, Pocket Books began distributing Canadian publisher Harlequin's romance novels in the United States. In 1979, Pocket Books lost the rights to distribute Harlequin books and so Simon & Schuster decided to create their own line of category romance novels to compete with them, called Silhouette. Harlequin sued Silhouette over the similarity of their covers, which they argued could confuse customers, so Silhouette made minor changes to the cover design of their main Silhouette Romance line. At the same time, Pocket Books was distributing a monthly line of romance novels from Richard Gallen Books, and acquired the rights to publish Star Trek novels (previously held by Bantam in the 1970s). Beginning in 1983 they distributed science fiction novels published by Baen Books, founded by Jim Baen (formerly an editor at Tor, and before that at Ace). In 1984, Harlequin acquired Silhouette, keeping its brand and category lines alive into the 21st century, until they were gradually phased out or rebranded with the Harlequin name. (But more on Harlequin later.)

Another Pocket Books imprint was Pocket Star which, after decades of publishing print editions in various genres, became a digital-only imprint in 2012. In the 1980s-90s, the Pocket Books imprint Archway published new mass-market paperback novels about Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, in addition to other books aimed at teens. Gulf & Western acquired Simon & Schuster (and Pocket Books) in the mid-1970s. In 1989, Gulf & Western became Paramount Communications (having acquired Paramount Pictures in 1966), and thereafter followed a series of changes involving its parent companies Viacom and CBS too confusing to get into here. As noted previously, Penguin Random House plans to acquire Simon & Schuster soon, adding yet another imprint to its massive roster.

Another of "The Big Five," Hachette, was mentioned at the beginning of this long post, as the owner of Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books). Hachette is a French company whose website reflects its international status with the option to read the site in French, English or Spanish. The U.S.-based Hachette is called Hachette Book Group which in addition to Grand Central includes Little, Brown and Company and science fiction imprint Orbit. This post is limited to the North American market, but it is worth mentioning that among Hachette's U.K. holdings are the U.K. paperback book publishers Coronet and Orion Books.

Macmillan, another of "The Big Five," is also an international publisher, founded in the U.K. in 1843, that owns U.K. publishers like Pan Books. Macmillan opened a U.S. branch in 1869 which became a separate company in 1896. Beginning in the 1960s, the U.S. Macmillan was acquired by a succession of companies, spawning various publishing divisions and eventually becoming part of Simon & Schuster in 1994. The U.S. and U.K. Macmillan were reunited in the 2000s when both were acquired by German company Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Macmillan founded the St. Martin's Press imprint in 1952, which today has its own imprints like Minotaur. You can also find many of their mass-market paperbacks in the St. Martin's Paperbacks imprint. Another currently-active Macmillan imprint is Flatiron Books, founded in 2014.

Another Macmillan imprint is Tor Books, a science fiction publisher founded in 1980 by Tom Doherty, who in 1970 was publisher of Tempo Books (a YA division of Grosset & Dunlap) and in 1975 publisher of Ace Books after it was acquired by Grosset & Dunlap. In 1980 Doherty left Ace to found Tor with the financial backing of Richard Gallen. In 1987, Tor was acquired by St. Martin's Press. In 1992, the Orb Books imprint was added, reprinting older science fiction novels, and the following year the Forge Books imprint (for non-SF titles) was created.

The final member of "The Big Five" is HarperCollins, who is perhaps the oldest publisher in this list, being the result of an eventual merger between an American company founded by the Harper brothers in 1817 and a Scottish company founded by William Collins in 1819. Both companies had been purchased by Rupert Murdoch, and were renamed HarperCollins in 1989. Harper & Row (HarperCollins' predecessor) had acquired Christian publisher Zondervan in 1988, and HarperCollins acquired another large Christian publisher, Thomas Nelson, in 2012. The two companies were then combined into HarperCollins Christian Publishing.

In 1999, HarperCollins acquired two more publishers, William Morrow & Company (whose name appears on their books' spines as a stylized "WM Morrow") and Avon Books, both of which had been owned by Hearst. Avon was founded in 1941 as a competitor to Pocket Books, and published comic books during the Golden Age as well. In 1959, Avon was bought by Hearst. Eventually the romance genre would dominate Avon's releases after the phenomenal success of the paperback original The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, which opened the door to more historical romance novels from Avon authors like Rosemary Rogers and Laurie McBain (who became known as "The Avon Ladies"). Today, as one of HarperCollins imprints, Avon remains one of the most popular publishers of romance novels.

The most popular, however, is Harlequin, which HarperCollins' owner News Corp bought from Canadian company Torstar in 2014. This means that technically Avon Books and Harlequin are part of the same company. In fact, when one goes to the official Harlequin website, one can purchase new Avon releases in addition to those published by Harlequin (although only in ebook versions, unlike the Harlequin ones which can be purchased there in either print or ebook editons). Harlequin Books has a long history that is already familiar to many fans of the romance genre. Suffice to say, it was founded in Winnipeg, Canada as a publisher of a variety of genres (not just romance), including some that were in association with U.K. publisher Pan Books. In 1957, with book #407, Harlequin began reprinting romance novels by UK publisher Mills & Boon. By 1963, Harlequin published reprints of Mills & Boon romance novels to the exclusion of anything else. In 1971, Harlequin purchased Mills & Boon, and the novels would appear on both sides of the Atlantic in various category romance novel lines, under the Harlequin name in the U.S. and Canada, and as Mills & Boon in the U.K. and Australia. Harlequin has been so successful and prominent that the publisher's name has become synonymous in public perception with the romance genre itself.

Harlequin has its own imprints (in addition to their category romance lines) including Worldwide (originally including romance, but now focusing on mystery), Gold Eagle (a "men's adventure" imprint best known for the Mack Bolan Executioner novels; Gold Eagle's closure was announced in 2014) and Mira (founded in 1994, for single-title mainstream fiction). Harlequin's line of Christian "inspirational" romances began as the Steeple Hill brand in 1998, which today appear as the Love Inspired and Love Inspired Suspense lines. In 2006 Harlequin founded Kimani Press in order to publish romance novels by African-American authors featuring African-American characters, following Harlequin's purchase of the pioneering Arabesque line from BET Books (more on that later). Arabesque ended in 2015 and the Kimani Romance line ended in 2018, but the existing Harlequin lines (particularly Harlequin Desire) have since become more welcoming of African-American authors.

Another popular publisher of romance novels, Kensington Books, is one that has remained independent, and therefore not part of "the big five" detailed above.

Kensington has its roots in an earlier publisher, Lancer Books, which was co-founded in 1961 by Walter Zacharius. They also had an adults-only imprint (tame by our standards) called Domino Books. Lancer is fondly remembered today by aging fantasy fans for their 1960s paperbacks collecting Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories (later printed by Ace). Also during that decade, Lancer published a few B&W collections reprinting Marvel superheroes such as Spider-Man and the Hulk, the characters' first book appearances outside of the comics themselves. Lancer pioneered "larger print" books, with an "Easy Eye" symbol on their covers. Unfortunately, I've found that some of these books tend to have the pages detach during the reading of them. (I've had to use Elmer's glue to reattach them.) Lancer went out of business in 1973. Magnum Books was a Lancer imprint, although I've seen later printings (post-Lancer's bankruptcy) of some Magnum novels which suggests to me the involvement of another publisher at some point.

In 1974, Walter Zacharius co-founded another company, Kensington Books, and this one didn't go bankrupt. In fact, it's still going strong, and now run by his son, Steven Zacharius. One of Kensington's first and most prominent imprints is Zebra Books, founded in 1975, which is primarily devoted to contemporary and historical romance. (The Zebra Books name is apparently unconnected to an earlier imprint with that name published by Grove Press.) In the 1980s, Zebra published various genres including romance and horror, both of which were booming in that decade. In April 1992, shortly after the death of Kensington's co-founder Roberta Bender Grossman, it was announced that Harlequin would purchase Zebra. By September, however, it was announced that the proposed deal was off, and that "the company will remain privately owned." In the late 1990s, Zebra was publishing two contemporary category romance lines every month: Bouquet (1999-2001) and Precious Gem (a Walmart exclusive line, 1996-2000). Although Zebra ended its long-running traditional Regency romance line in 2005, novels in that subgenre still appear regularly among Zebra's output.

Kensington's other major imprint is Pinnacle Books. In the 1970s, Pinnacle was originally owned by another publisher, and based in Los Angeles. In fact, Harlequin wanted to acquire Pinnacle in 1979, but the U.S. Justice Department warned them against it (just like they had cracked down on CBS for buying Fawcett). Pinnacle was publishing Don Pendleton's Executioner novels, but Harlequin did acquire that series in 1981 as the big gun for the debut of their Gold Eagle line. By 1982, Pinnacle was based out of 1430 Broadway in New York (near Times Square). In 1988, Kensington acquired Pinnacle (which at that time was an imprint of the Windsor Publishing Corporation) that still published a variety of genres including historical romance, although today focuses on westerns and suspense thrillers. Most prominent among these are the westerns credited to the authorship of William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone (his niece). Multiple Johnstone books are released every month (although some are reissues) despite the fact that William W. Johnstone passed away in 2004.

     In 1994, Kensington launched the Arabesque romance line, written by African-American authors and featuring people of color as the main characters. (This actually wasn't the first attempt to do so in the romance genre, since Odyssey Books had begun with the same focus in 1990.)  In this video, Walter Zacharius discussed the origins of the Arabesque line.  In 1998, BET Books acquired Arabesque, although (as Steve Ammidown notes on his romance history blog) "Kensington continued to publish the books" and "BET provided the promotion."  The books looked the same as before, retaining the Arabesque symbol on the spines, except that the Pinnacle symbol was replaced with the BET Books logo, as can be seen on the right side of the photo at the top of this blog post.  The BET Books line was acquired by Harlequin in 2005, as noted earlier.  Kensington replaced Arabesque with another African-American centered imprint, Dafina Books.  Other Kensington imprints include Kensington Mystery, Citadel Press and John Scognamiglio Books (run by the longtime Kensington editor). 

     One prominent paperback publisher who has since vanished from the industry entirely (and not due to being swallowed up by another company) is Dorchester Publishing which was founded in 1971 and shut down its print operations in 2010.  In the 39 years in-between, Dorchester published hundreds of paperbacks, having acquired Leisure Books as an imprint in the early 1980s.  (Leisure Books was previously published by Nordon Publications, which is no longer active.)  In 1993, editor Alicia Condon (now at Kensington) introduced the monthly Love Spell imprint, which included time-travel and futuristic romance novels.  Time travel romances had their own series in the 1990s with the introduction of the Timeswept brand. Another Dorchester imprint was Centurion Books which also published romance novels (I have two of them, both from 1990).  Leisure Books were regularly featured on the front covers of Romantic Times magazine at this time which suggests a heavy investment by Dorchester in the genre. 

     Some Leisure Books were subsequently reprinted under the BMI (Book Margins, Inc.) name, although the relationship between the two companies is unclear.  It is believed that Leisure was able to use BMI as a "phantom" publisher in order to repackage existing books and make them available to stores at a deep discount as "special sales" which would contractually not count towards royalties earned by the author based on the book's sales. (BMI also published a number of Barbara Cartland reprints in 1999, but they had originally been published in the early 1980s by Bantam, not Dorchester.) Years later, in 2011, there were reports that authors were not being paid by Dorchester, shortly before its demise.  The Hard Case Crime series (see below) had been published by Dorchester, but in 2010 they got out in the nick of time, just before it all went under.

     Generally there is less sentimentality and nostalgia associated with mass-market paperback books than with other media, at least among the publishers themselves, where there are few attempts at evoking past efforts with a retro look.  An exception is the Hard Case Crime series, founded in 2004 but looking like a throwback to the mid-20th century with its lurid painted covers.  This is a knowing nostalgia, however, with an expert's eye towards quality and style.  Hard Case Crime was co-published by Dorchester until 2011 when the U.K. publisher Titan Books replaced them.  In recent years the series has been in the slightly-larger trade paperback format, however, not the traditional mass-market paperback (mmpb).  

     Over the decades Harlequin has reprinted their older romance novels, again and again, but since the late 1970s they have updated the covers (and sometimes even the titles) of the reprints to make them look more contemporary.  An exception was in 2009 when Harlequin reprinted six of their (non-romance) 1950s hard-boiled crime novels in replica editions as part of "The Harlequin Vintage Collection."  This led to criticism from some collectors of vintage crime paperbacks, however, when they learned that Harlequin made minor edits to the original texts in order not to offend modern sensibilities, somewhat defeating the purpose of having replica editions of the hard-to-find original paperbacks.  

                                                        

     A more recent example of a paperback book publisher appealing to collector nostalgia for an older brand is BBC Books' revival of Target Books (which had published a beloved line of Doctor Who novelizations in the 1970s and 1980s) with replica editions beginning in 2011, followed with brand-new novels since 2017.  You can see from the examples shown here how closely BBC Books has been trying to replicate the look of the original Target editions with their new volumes, so that they match the format that collectors of the originals already have on their shelves.  Above right is the cover of a new Target novel, published in March 2021, and to its left is a Target edition from the year that they first appeared, 1973. (Both BBC Books and Target are U.K. publishers, of course, and therefore outside the scope of this blog post, but as a Doctor Who fan and a fan of vintage paperbacks, I'm making an exception here.  Incidentally, in the 1980s some of the Target Doctor Who novels were reprinted for American audiences in a short-lived numbered line by Pinnacle Books, but the Target editions were also available as imports.) 

     Through the decades, there have been numerous American paperback book publishers that achieved some limited success before fading away entirely after encountering financial difficulties and finding themselves unable to continue, as we have seen above.  Some more examples include Award Books (1964-1977), published by Universal Publishing and Distributing Corporation (which from 1968 to 1975 owned the U.K. company that created the above-mentioned Target Books).  In the 1960s, Award Books published a line of paperback reprints of Inner Sanctum Mystery books that had originally been published in hardcover by Simon & Schuster.  

     Another now-defunct paperback company was Macfadden Books, published by the Macfadden-Bartell Corporation, which used a squeezed-together "MB" symbol on its covers.  Its paperback line derived from another publisher, Hillman, that Macfadden acquired in 1961.  By the 1970s, the Macfadden line was replaced by the short-lived Manor Books.  The MacFadden Romance line (circa 1978-80) may be unrelated to the earlier company, since that line was put out by Kim Publishing (who were then sued by Harlequin for plagiarizing their books).

      Some of these defunct paperback houses have connections with the history of comic books.  Belmont Books was founded in 1960 by Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John L. Goldwater.  Back in 1939, they had started a comics company called MLJ (named after the first letters of their first names) that became Archie Comics in 1946.  In the 1960s, Belmont published several new novels featuring the pulp hero The Shadow (one of them is shown at right).  In the 1970s, old Shadow pulp novels were reprinted by Pyramid and its successor Jove.  Incidentally, it was announced last year that James Patterson and Brian Sitts are reviving The Shadow in a new series of novels.  The first new Shadow novel will be released by Grand Central in July 2021.  

     In 1958, Archie Comics editor Harry Shorten, along with Louis Silberkleit, founded Tower Publications, which owned paperback book imprints Tower Books and Midwood Books.  In the mid-1960s, Tower had its own comic book line as well.  The Bookscans site notes: "In 1969, Belmont was merged with Tower Publications....but they apparently didn't begin producing the "Belmont Tower" series until 1972."  The combined company had a simple "BT" logo on their covers until the paperback book division closed in 1981.

     Martin Goodman, publisher of the company that would become Marvel Comics, published paperback novels under the name Lion Books from 1949 to 1957.  Monarch Books of Derby, CT published paperback books from 1958 to 1965 in association with Charlton Publications, the magazine and comic book publisher.  You can read more about these and other long-gone publishers in Kenneth R. Johnson's Defunct Paperbacks articles, located at the indispensable Bookscans website.  (There's also a page about pre-1980 Scholastic Books there. I admit that I left Scholastic out of this post's list of current paperback book publishers. Do they still publish stuff in the standard mass-market paperback book format?) 

Fortunately there are still some independent mass-market paperback publishers to be found on the shelves at your neighborhood supermarket or department store. In 1987, the company Sourcebooks was founded, which has since become a prominent player in the book industry. I had not heard of them before until recently when obtaining novels of their romance genre imprint Sourcebooks Casablanca. As a growing company, Sourcebooks followed the traditional pattern shown throughout this post and in 2018 it acquired another company -- mystery publisher Poisoned Pen Press. The following year, it was announced that "Penguin Random House has acquired a 45% stake in Sourcebooks," according to the Publishers Weekly article about the news. "The hands-off approach promised by PRH where Sourcebooks is concerned doesn’t mean the two companies won’t be working together," the article notes, quoting PRH's CEO as saying that they can help "awareness of Sourcebooks' brand on a global level, and ....help to expand it." There was "no plan to take a majority stake in Sourcebooks," the article explained.

Another current independent mass-market paperback book publisher that has achieved a lot of visibility in recent years is Entangled Publishing, based in Colorado, along with its imprint Amara. Entangled was founded in 2011 and primarily publishes romantic fiction. Like the above-mentioned Sourcebooks, Entangled does have connections with a larger company, since it is distributed by Macmillan, who note on their website that "Entangled releases approximately 30-45 titles per month in digital first format and 4 per month in simultaneous print and e formats." According to their own site, Entangled also has "a joint partnership with St. Martin’s Press that enables us to showcase a select number of books in mass-market paperback." Despite this success, Entangled apparently doesn't have a page on Wikipedia yet.

Although it's possible that the mania for mergers and acquisitions by multinational corporations has allowed some publishers (say, Dell or Jove) to continue to exist in some form when they might have otherwise perished, it can also be argued that the process has robbed some of these formerly independent publishers of the unique qualities that made them successful to begin with. Some have become mere shells of their former selves, the company in name only, on a gradual slide towards eventual elimination. That's the risk whenever an independent publisher is purchased and swallowed up by a much larger company, that the goliath is simply getting rid of the competition instead of adding its own strength to a smaller associate.

For example, while writing this blog post, I looked over various paperbacks that I have on my bookshelves to see which companies published them, and I found two books that were published by Carroll & Graf in the 1990s, reprinting early work by Rex Stout. According to their Wikipedia page, the company was founded in 1982 by the two men after whom the company was named, both of whom had previously worked for Grove Press. "Carroll & Graf was purchased by the Avalon Publishing Group in 1998," the Wikipedia entry concludes. "Avalon was purchased by the Perseus Books Group in January 2007. Avalon closed down Carroll & Graf immediately." This reminds me of what I said earlier about the fate of Fawcett Books: "Why buy it and not use it?"

More than any specific company, however, the thing that I hope the most to endure is the mass-market paperback book itself: an inexpensive and attractive object that can easily be passed from reader to reader for (as we have seen) the span of several decades. There have been some changes through the decades with the format's size, and personally I dislike the tall, narrow format that Pocket Books have been using in recent years. On the other hand, I adore the larger "mass max" format (smaller than a trade paperback, but wider than a traditional mmpb) that was introduced in 2020 and has slowly become standard for single-title releases, at least at Harlequin and Kensington.

While comic books have retreated from drugstore racks to specialty shops, and new record albums occupy a shrinking retail space as music goes increasingly online, and the cover price of a magazine climbs frightfully high, the mass-market paperback novel holds steady, arriving like clockwork every month with more new releases to be read. Some genres and publishers are less represented on the shelves than they were in the past, but there is more ethnic and gender diversity of voices now than before, too. For those who might complain about the price of inflation or the lack of imagination in today's entertainment, I say take a look at today's paperback books. You just might find something worth your time.