Between Covers: The Rise and Transformation of Book Publishing in America

Between Covers goes behind the famous imprints to tell the often surprising story of the men and women who have made up more than two centuries of American book publishing. The only comprehensive, single-volume history of the profession, it is a book rich in life and color, in anecdote and biography. John Tebbel offers fascinating portraits of the founders of the great houses--the Harper brothers, George Palmer Putnam, the Scribners, Henry Oscar Houghton, among them--as well as of the figures who led the industry after the First World War--Alfred A. Knopf, Horace Liveright, Bennett Cerf, Stanley Rinehart, Alfred Harcourt, and many others. Tebbel traces the evolution of the industry through a fascinating series of developments: the astonishing rise of paperbacks before the Civil War, book selling through subscription, the great fiction boom of the 1890s, bouts with censorship, the tremendous growth of specialized publishing, and the escalating role of advertising, promotion, and publicity. The closing pages deal with the explosion in mass market publishing of the postwar era and the entry of conglomerates, and examine the state of publishing today. Based on the author's monumental four-volume History of Book Publishing in the United States, Between Covers will be of enormous appeal to everyone who loves books and reading.