Pocket Books, founded in New York in 1939, launched the American mass-market paperback; most of its books are reprints, so a Pocket copy is usually a first paperback, not a first edition.
Pocket Books is a publisher based in New York City, founded in 1939. We track 526 editions it published between 1857 and 2019, 389 of them first editions across 504 books. How Pocket Books marked its first editions is set out below, with a checker for the year on your title page.
About Pocket Books
Pocket Books is a New York paperback publisher, founded in 1939 and now part of Simon & Schuster.
Robert Fair de Graff started it with Richard L. Simon, M. Lincoln Schuster and Leon Shimkin, taking Penguin in Britain and Albatross in Germany as models, to sell the first American mass-market, pocket-sized paperbacks at 25 cents. The first ten numbered titles appeared in May 1939 in runs of about 10,000, among them Lost Horizon, Wuthering Heights, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Bambi. The editorial policy was to reprint popular fiction, mysteries and non-fiction.
Marshall Field III bought the firm in 1944. After his death in 1957 Leon Shimkin and James M. Jacobson bought it for five million dollars, and Simon & Schuster acquired it in 1966. Pocket took the Star Trek licence in 1979 and issued hundreds of tie-in novels before the line moved to Gallery Books from 2017. Its first hardcover appeared in 1989, and in May 2000 it published the first edition of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons.
Imprints over the years have included Permabooks, Cardinal Edition, Pocket Star, Timescape and Wanderer, and it distributes Baen Books.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Pocket Books's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Pocket Books first editions
What to look for
The single most useful fact: Pocket Books was founded as a paperback reprint line. For most Pocket titles, above all before the 1970s, the Pocket copy is a later paperback and the first edition is a hardback from another publisher. The exceptions are paperback originals and the hardcovers it issued from 1989.
1930s to 1950s
Early numbered Pocket Books are collected for their place in the history of the American paperback, not as first editions of the text. First printings of the 1939 titles are scarce, and condition matters greatly.
1960s
1970s to 1980s
Where a Pocket book has a number line, the lowest number present gives the printing; a line that includes 1 marks a first printing.
From 1989
Pocket issued its first hardcover in 1989 and published Angels & Demons on 1 May 2000.
Book club copies are often smaller than the trade edition and their jackets carry no price; the trade copy has a priced jacket.
The single most useful fact: Pocket Books was founded as a paperback reprint line. For most Pocket titles, above all before the 1970s, the Pocket copy is a later paperback and the first edition is a hardback from another publisher. The exceptions are paperback originals and the hardcovers it issued from 1989. 1930s to 1950s - Early numbered Pocket Books are collected for their place in the history
How many Pocket Books books does MyVolumes track?
We track 526 editions published by Pocket Books, 389 of them first editions, across 504 books.
