In Australia, the paperback began its development late in the last century. It followed the then English model of being produced as one of a number of alternative editions available at a range of prices. An example is C.J. Dennis’s first book Backblock Ballads, published in 1913 in three editions: quality bound at five shillings; ordinary cloth binding at two and sixpence, and paperback (vols for the proles) at one and sixpence.

Obviously its publisher, E.W. Cole, had high hopes of it although, in spite of including the first ‘sentimental bloke’ poems, it did not sell well and is now a collector’s item in any edition.

A major problem of issuing paperbacks in this fashion was that the same paper was used for all editions, only the bindings changed. The light paper covers of the paperback editions quickly fell away from the heavy paper text pages which were designed for the more substantial hardback bindings. This also applied to another use of paperbacks, that of wrapping paper covers around the unbound stock of a hardback that hadn’t sold well enough to merit binding the full edition – an early form of ‘remaindering’.

Australia’s first paperback innovator was Alfred Cecil Rowlandson who owned the New South Wales Bookstall chain of shops early in the century. He began publishing his NSW Bookstall series of publishing soon after the turn of the century. Most of his books were paperback originals although his staple author, Steele Rudd, had previously appeared in hardbound editions.

Rowlandson’s publishing was of an age when long travelling times demanded plenty of light reading. His books were priced at a shilling or thereabout and featured brightly coloured covers. He had a flair for finding promising young artists to produce coves and illustrations. Those who worked for him included Normal, Lionel, Percy and Ruby Lindsay, D.H. Souter, George Lambert, and Will Dyson. The Bookstall series concentrated on novels of adventure, romance and humour, with occasional collections of short stores and non-fiction on popular topics such as bushranging.

Among its better-known authors were Roy Bridges, A. G. Stephens, Vance Palmer, Dale Collins, and the thriller writers J. M. Walsh and Gavin Holt. Of these, all except Stephens used the series as a training ground, publishing their early novels with it, before moving onto more prestigious publishers. Norman Lindsay made his début as an author with the Bookstall. He novel A Curate in Bohemia was published in the series in 1913, but not until after Norman had re-drawn a cover considered too daring for the times.

Rowlandson died in 1922, although his imprint survived for many more years. In his twenty years of publishing paperbacks, he produced about two hundred titles with total sales of approximately four million. This was an astonishing feat considering the small size of the population at the time.

Although other publishers experimented with paperbacks they did not have the built-in distribution that Rowlandson’s chain of bookstalls offered him. The next major movement was in paperback publishing came when the Second War closed off book imports from Britain.

Some Australian book distributors issued the titles of their overseas publishers in co-publication. An example was the Penguin agent, Thomas C. Lothian, who printed Penguin titles under a joint Penguin/Lothian imprint.

Various other publishers began their own paperback series using Australian authors. One was New Century Press, as a large publishing company, another the publisher Currawong Press. They mainly introduced cheap popular fiction – romantic novels, westerns and thrillers.

More adventurous was Frank Johnson who followed the Penguin tradition of naming series after birds when he founded his Magpie series. He issued many ‘Magpies’ to a standard format and the standard price of one shilling and a penny. His books, with their blue and white covers, were a mixture of original titles and titles previously published in hardback. According to his advertising they presented ‘various forms of Australian life in romance and thrilling adventure ... the finest and cheapest books yet issued in Australia’. Thriller writer Max Afford was .one of the staples of the Magpie list and many of its authors are little remembered today. Among them, however, was Jean Devanny whose Sugar heaven has recently been reprinted and Eric Musspratt who was the subject of a recent biography and who had some success as a novelist in the United Kingdom.

Wartime conditions also brought about a paperback series called the Australian Pocket Library, with titles chosen from different publishers by the advisory committee to the then Commonwealth Literary Fund which assisted publication.

These cheaply printed paperbacks, priced between one and two shillings, were mainly reissues of books by well-known Australian authors such as Lawson, Paterson, Dennis, Miles Franklin, Frank Dalby Davidson, and Vance Palmer. The series included novels, verse, short stories, non-fiction and essays.

After the war, with the reintroduction of shipping from Britain, Australian paperback publishing lost impetus. The 1950s, however, saw the staggering success of paperback publisher Stanley Horwitz who had taken over his father’s pulp publishing business founded in the 1920s.

In the early 1950s, Horwitz were publishers of cheap westerns, mystery stories, and comics. Observing the rise in popularity of the paperback format, Stanley Horwitz decided to upgrade the family imprint. His books, like those of most pulp publishers, were printed in small type on cheap paper and published in a saddle-stapled magazine format with thin paper covers.

Horwitz increased the type-size and adopted the more commonly known paperback format. He also established a formula of Horwitz book ‘types’. These included mystery novels, the most successful of which were by Carter Brown (Alan Yates); wartime sea stories of J.E. Macdonnell and others, and medical romances by authors such as Shane Douglas (Richard Wilkes-Hunter). Many of the Horwitz titles were written pseudonymously by journalists and others.

The formula proved successful. By the early 1960s a new maritime adventure by Macdonnell would achieve a sale of 40,000 in Australia alone. In addition there were sales to overseas paperback publishers, with rights to the Carter Brown novels selling particularly successfully.

In the 1960s Horwitz began to diversify. Writers such as John Cleary, Lawson Glassop, Darcy Niland, Ruth Park, and Damien Broderick were added to the Horwitz list. Co-publication deals were struck with Penguin Books and Four Square Books. Horwitz moved into educational publishing and established a successful imprint in that field.

The mid-1960s brought the first determinedly quality Australian paperback publishing house with Brian Stonier and Geoffrey Dutton’s Sun Books which still operates as an imprint of Macmillan Company of Australia. Sun’s early publishing was a mixture of paperback originals such as Donald Horne’s novel, The Permit and Geoffrey Dutton’s Australia and the Monarchy, and paperback editions of well-known authors such as David Martin, Judah Waten, Jack McLaren, and Elizabeth Harrower.

Hardback publishers had also begun their paperback imprints, mainly to issue their already published titles in paperback. They included Angus and Robertson’s Pacific Books, Rigby’s Seal imprint and Ure Smith’s Humour book series.

By the 1960s, however, Penguin Books had begun their move into Australian publishing. They proved successful as an Australian paperback publisher and other overseas publishers began exploring the market for Australian paperbacks. In the decade that followed, Australian paperback publishing as we know it today rapidly took shape.