The new paperback industry was faced with some difficult challenges during World War II. In particular, the War Board’s Paper Limitation order placed serious restrictions and rations on the use of paper. Publishers began to worry whether they would have enough paper to satisfy both the civilian and military appetite for paperbacks. Manpower shortages and transportation difficulties were also proving to be difficult challenges. In response, some publishers—Pocket Books, for instance—reduced their publication schedules and reset their books in smaller type thereby reducing the number of pages per book. Others simply rejected longer books in favor of shorter ones.

In the end, World War II proved to be a boon to the emerging paperback industry. During the war, a landmark agreement was reached with the government in which paperbound books would be produced at a very low price for distribution to service men and women overseas. These books—Armed Services Editions, as they were called—were often passed from one soldier or sailor to another, being read and re-read over and over again until they literally fell apart. Their stories of home helped ease the soldier’s loneliness and homesickness, and they could be easily carried in uniform pockets and read anywhere—in fox holes, barracks, transport planes, etc. Of course, once the war was over millions of veterans returned home with an insatiable appetite for reading. They were hooked, and their passion for reading these books helped launch a period of unprecedented growth in the paperback industry.

The reading tastes of these veterans were directly reflected in the popularity of certain genres at the turn of the decade. In the mid- to late 1940s, mysteries, romance, thrillers, and hardboiled detective stories seemed to sell better. In the early 1950s new genres—science fiction, westerns, gay and lesbian, juvenile delinquent and “sleaze”, for instance—gained in popularity as readers were presented with stories never before seen in print. Publishers also came to realize that sex would sell books… lots of books. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they ditched their conservative and straightforward cover images for alluring covers that frequently featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised stories of sex and violence within the covers. Before long, books with sensational covers had completely taken over the paperback racks and cash registers. To this day, the cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago.

Science fiction titles reflected the uncertain times during which they were written. The Cold War was just beginning, the threat of nuclear annihilation was on everyone’s mind, governments in Eastern Europe were falling to Communists, and Senator Joseph McCarthy was looking for “un-American activities” everywhere in the United States. Many science fiction stories in the early days of the paperback revolution were little more than soap operas or westerns set in space—good guys taking on bad guys while rescuing damsels in distress—that were short stories taken from the pulp magazines. In 1952, however, Ballantine Books changed all that by becoming the first paperback publisher to release novel-length science fiction stories that were sophisticated, intelligent and thematically serious. In 1953, Ballantine Book No. 41 was released—Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451—and the paperback’s science fiction genre launched like a rocket heading to Venus.