Avon Publications was an American The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the paperback book Paperback, softback, or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or cardboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples and comic book A comic book is a magazine made up of narrative artwork, virtually always accompanied by dialog (usually in word balloons, emblematic of the comic book artform) and often including brief descriptive prose. The first comic book appeared in the United States of America in 1934, reprinting the earlier newspaper comic strips, which established many of publisher. As of 2007, it exists as an imprint Below are a few examples of imprints , sorted by publishing company in alphabetical order. It shows the diversity of imprints and how widely they are used in the publishing industry. This list is intended to show examples, not be a comprehensive list, so no more than a few imprints per publishing house are given. Notice that it is possible for of HarperCollins HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray. The company publishes under many different imprints. The Collins English Dictionary is an, publishing primarily romance novels.[1]
History
Avon Books was founded in 1941 by the American News Corporation (ANC) to create a rival to Pocket Books Pocket produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry. The German Albatross Books had pioneered the idea of a line of color-coded paperback editions in 1931 under Kurt Enoch; Penguin Books in Britain had refined the idea in 1935 and had 1 million books in print by. They hired brother and sister Joseph Myers and Edna Myers Williams to establish the company. ANC bought out J.S. Ogilvie Publications, a pulp magazine Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines. They were widely published from the 1920s through the 1950s. The term pulp fiction can also refer to mass market paperbacks since the 1950s publisher partly owned by both the Myers, and renamed it "Avon Publications". They also got into comic books A comic book is a magazine made up of narrative artwork, virtually always accompanied by dialog (usually in word balloons, emblematic of the comic book artform) and often including brief descriptive prose. The first comic book appeared in the United States of America in 1934, reprinting the earlier newspaper comic strips, which established many of. "The early Avons were somewhat similar in appearance to the existing paperbacks of Pocket Books, resulting in an immediate and largely ineffective lawsuit by that company. Despite this superficial similarity, though, from early on Myers differentiated Avon by placing an emphasis on popular appeal rather than loftier concepts of literary merit."[2] The first 40 titles were not numbered. First editions of the first dozen or so have front and rear endpapers with an illustration of a globe. The emphasis on "popular appeal" led Avon to publish ghost stories, sexually-suggestive love stories, fantasy novels and science fiction in its early years, which were far removed in audience appeal from the somewhat more literary Pocket competition.
As well as normal-sized paperbacks, Avon published digest-format paperbacks (the size and shape of the present-day Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is an American monthly digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime fiction, particularly detective fiction. Launched in 1941 by Mercury Press, EQMM is named for the author Ellery Queen, who wrote novels and short stories about a fictional detective named Ellery Queen) in series. These included Murder Mystery Monthly, Modern Short Story Monthly and Avon Fantasy Readers. Many authors highly prized by present-day collectors were published in these editions, including A. Merritt, James M. Cain James Mallahan Cain was an American journalist and novelist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labelling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir, H. P. Lovecraft Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American author of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, known then simply as weird fiction, Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler was an Anglo-American crime writer who had an immense stylistic influence upon the modern private eye story, especially in the style of the writing and the attitudes now characteristic of the genre. His protagonist, Philip Marlowe, is synonymous with "private detective," along with Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and Robert E. Howard Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. His most famous character — created in the pages of the Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales — Conan the Barbarian.
In 1953, Avon Books sold books in the price range of 25¢ to 50¢ (for the Avon "G" series, the "G" standing for "Giant") and were selling more than 20 million copies a year. Their books were characterized by Time Magazine as "westerns, whodunits and the kind of boy-meets-girl story that can be illustrated by a ripe cheesecake jacket." [3] At around this time, Avon also began to publish under other imprints, including Eton (1951-1953), Novel Library, Broadway and Diversey. Avon's 35-cent "T" series, introduced in 1953, also had strong mass-market appeal and contains many outstanding examples of the then-popular juvenile delinquent story. The T series also contained many movie tie-in editions and the stand-bys of mysteries and science fiction.
Avon was bought by the Hearst Corporation Hearst Communications, Inc. is a privately-held American-based media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower in New York City, USA. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media. The Hearst family is involved in the ownership and management of the company in 1959.[4] In 1999, the News Corporation News Corporation is one of the world's largest media conglomerates. The company's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder is Rupert Murdoch bought out Hearst's book division, and merged Avon with HarperCollins.
Avon Comics
From at least 1945 through the mid-1950s, Avon published comic books A comic book is a magazine made up of narrative artwork, virtually always accompanied by dialog (usually in word balloons, emblematic of the comic book artform) and often including brief descriptive prose. The first comic book appeared in the United States of America in 1934, reprinting the earlier newspaper comic strips, which established many of. Its titles included horror fiction Horror fiction is a genre of fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience. Historically, the cause of the "horror" experience has often been the intrusion of a supernatural element into everyday human experience. Since the 1960s, any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, or exceptionally, science fiction Science fiction is a broad genre of fiction that often involves speculations on current or future science or technology. Science fiction is found in books, magazines, art, television, films, games, theatre, and other media. In organizational or marketing contexts, science fiction can be synonymous with the broader definition of speculative fiction,, Westerns Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West frontier and typically set during the late nineteenth century. Well-known writers of Western fiction include Zane Grey from the early 1900s and Louis L'Amour from the mid 20th century. The genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely due to the popularity of televised Westerns, romance comics Romance comics in the United States was a genre of American comic books that featured realistic scripts and art about love, domestic strife, and heartache. The genre's origins are traced to the years immediately following WWII when the comic book industry experienced an increase in adult readership. Caped crimebusters and superheroes were, war comics and funny-animal Funny animal is a cartooning term for the genre of comics and animated cartoons in which the main characters are humanoid or talking animals, with anthropomorphic personality traits. The characters themselves may also be called funny animals. Well-known examples include Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry comics. Most titles lasted only a few issues, with the six longest-running detailed in the complete list below:
- All True Detective
- Atomic Spy Cases
- Attack On Planet Mars
- Avon Fantasy - An Earth Man On Venus
- Bachelor's Diary
- Badmen of the West
- Badmen of Tombstone
- Behind Prison Bars
- Betty and Her Steady
- The Blackhawk Indian Tomahawk War
- Blazing Six Guns
- Boy Detective
- Buddies in the U.S. Army
- Butch Cassidy
- Campus Romance
- Captain Silver's Log of the Sea Hound
- Captain Steve Savage (1950 and 1954 series)
- Chief Crazy Horse
- Chief Victorio's Apache Massacre
- City of the Living Dead
- Complete Romance
- Cow Puncher
- Custer's Last Fight
- The Dalton Boys
- Davy Crockett
- Diary of Horror
- Eerie (1947 series) and Eerie (17 issues, 1951-53)
- Escape from Devil's Island
- Famous Gangsters
- Fighting Daniel Boone
- Fighting Davy Crockett
- Fighting Indians of the Wild West! (plus 1952 annual)
- Fighting Undersea Commandos
- Flying Saucers (1950 and 1952 series)
- For a Night of Love
- Frontier Romances
- Funnies Annual
- Funny Tunes
- Gangsters and Gun Molls
- Geronimo
- Going Steady with Betty
- Jesse James (24 issues plus 1952 annual, 1950-56; no issues #10-14 published)
- King of the Bad Men of Deadwood
- King Solomon's Mines
- Kit Carson
- Last of The Comanches
- Little Jack Frost
- The Mask of Dr. Fu Manchu
- The Masked Bandit
- Merry Mouse
- Molly O'Day
- Murderous Gangsters
- Night of Mystery
- Out of This World
- Out of This World Adventures
- Outlaws of the Wild West
- Pancho Villa
- Parole Breakers
- Penny
- Peter Rabbit Comics (#1-6, 1947-1949) and Peter Rabbit (#7-34, 1950-56)
- Peter Rabbit Easter Parade (one-shot)
- Peter Rabbit Jumbo Book (one-shot)
- Phantom Witch Doctor
- Pixie Puzzle Rocket To Adventureland (one-shot)
- Police Line-Up
- Prison Break!
- Prison Riot
- Realistic Romances
- Red Mountain featuring Quantrell's Raiders
- Robotmen of the Lost Planet
- Rocket to the Moon"
- Romantic Love (1949 and 1954 series)
- The Saint (12 issues, 1947-1952)
- The Savage Raids of Chief Geronimo
- Sea Hound
- Secret Diary of Eerie Adventures
- Sensational Police Cases
- Sheriff Bob Dixon's Chuck Wagon
- Sideshow
- Slave Girl Comics
- Space Comics
- Space Detective
- Space Mouse
- Space Thrillers
- Sparkling Love
- Spotty the Pup
- Strange Worlds (22 issues, 1950-1952, 1954-1955)
- Super Pup
- Teddy Roosevelt and His Rough Riders
- Television Puppet Show
- U.S. Marines in Action
- U.S. Paratroops
- U.S. Tank Commandos
- Undersea Fighting Commandos
- The Underworld Story'
- The Unknown Man
- War Dogs of the U.S. Army
- Western Bandits
- White Chief of the Pawnee Indians
- White Princess of the Jungle
- Wild Bill Hickock (28 issues, 1949-1956)
- Witchcraft
- With the U.S. Paratroops Behind Enemy Lines
Footnotes
- ^ Avon home page. Accessed 1/6/2007.
- ^ Canja, Jeff. (2002) Collectable Paperback Books, Second Edition, East Lansing, MI: Glenmoor Publishing. ISBN 0-9673639-5-0
- ^ "Highbrow Smorgasbord," Time Magazine, August 10, 1953.
- ^ "Quiet Deal," Time Magazine, Augusut 31, 1959.
Categories: Book publishing companies of the United States | Comic book publishing companies of the United States | Defunct comics and manga publishers
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