With America gripped by the Great Depression, booksellers found that $2.75 put hardcover books out of reach for most readers. (A movie ticket then cost just 20 cents.) In 1939, with a full-page ad in the New York Times and ten titles, Robert de Graff changed the industry with the introduction of 25-cent paperback books. Mental Floss looks at the history of the paperback book from the introduction of de Graff’s mass-market books to trade paperbacks a few years later.
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