Fawcett Publications

Fawcett Publications was an American publishing company launched in 1919 in Robbinsdale, Minnesota by Wilford H. "Captain Billy" Fawcett (1883-1940). A World War I Army captain, Fawcett had been a police reporter for the Minneapolis Journal before the war.

Paperbacks

Fawcett was also an independent newsstand distributor, and in 1949 the company negotiated a contract with New American Library to distribute their Mentor and Signet titles. This contract prohibited Fawcett from becoming a competitor by publishing their own paperback reprints. However, Roscoe Kent Fawcett wanted to establish a line of Fawcett paperbacks, and he felt original paperbacks would not be a violation of the contract. In order to test a loophole in the contract, Fawcett published two anthologies -- The Best of True Magazine and What Today's Woman Should Know About Marriage and Sex -- reprinting material from Fawcett magazines not previously published in books. When these books successfully sailed through the contract loophole, Fawcett announced Gold Medal Books, their line of paperback originals. It was a revolutionary turning point in paperback publishing.

Related Topics:
Newsstand - New American Library - Paperback - Loophole - Gold Medal Books

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Fawcett's editor-in-chief was Ralph Daigh, who had been hired by Captain Billy in 1928. Gold Medal's first editor was Jim Bishop, a former Collier's editor later known for his series of best-selling non-fiction titles -- The Day Lincoln Was Shot, The Day Christ Died and The Day Kennedy Was Shot. When Bishop left after a year, he was replaced by veteran Fawcett editor William Lengle. Gold Medal's art director was Al Allard, who also had been employed with Fawcett since 1928. Radcliffe graduate Rona Jaffe, who joined the company in 1952, left three years later to pursue a writing career. Her best-selling 1958 novel, The Best of Everything, is obviously drawn from her experiences at Fawcett and Gold Medal. At the time of Jaffe's departure from Fawcett in 1955, the new associate editor who stepped in was Leona Nevler, formerly with Little, Brown but later known in publishing circles as the person who saw the potential of Grace Metalious' best-selling Peyton Place after picking it from the slush pile at publisher Julian Messner.

Related Topics:
Collier's - Rona Jaffe - Grace Metalious - Peyton Place

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Beginning their numbering system at 101, Gold Medal got underway with Alan Hynd's We Are the Public Enemies, the anthology Man Story and The Persian Cat by John Flagg. Writing about the demise of pulp magazines in The Dime Detectives, Ron Goulart observed, "Fawcett dealt another blow to the pulps when, in 1950, it introduced its Gold Medal line. What Gold Medal specialized in was original novels. Some were merely sleazy, but others were in a tough, hard-boiled style that seemed somehow more knowing and more contemporary than that of the surviving pulps. Early Gold Medal authors included John D. MacDonald, Charles Williams, and Richard S. Prather."

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Other 1950 Gold Medal originals included the Western Stretch Dawson by William R. Burnett and three mystery-adventure novels -- Nude in Mink by Sax Rohmer, I'll Find You by Richard Himmel. After Donald E. Keyhoe's article "Flying Saucers Are Real" in True (January 1950) created a sold-out sensation, with True going back to press for another print run, Keyhoe expanded the article into a top-selling paperback, The Flying Saucers Are Real, published by Fawcett that same year.

Related Topics:
William R. Burnett - Sax Rohmer

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Ralph Daigh commented, "In the past six months we have produced 9,020,645 books, and people seem to like them very well." However, hardcover publishers resented Roscoe Fawcett's innovation, as evidenced by Doubleday's LeBaron R. Barker, who claimed that paperback originals could "undermine the whole structure of publishing."

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With an increase from 35 titles in 1950 to 66 titles in 1951, Gold Medal's obvious success in issuing paperback originals revolutionized the industry. While Bruno Fischer, MacKinley Kantor, Louis L'Amour, John D. MacDonald, Richard Matheson and Richard Prather were joining Gold Medal's roster of writers, other paperback publishers were soon asking agents for original manuscripts. Literary agent Donald MacCampbell stated that one publisher "threatened to boycott my agency if it continued to negotiate contracts with original 25-cent firms."

Related Topics:
Louis L'Amour - John D. MacDonald - Richard Matheson

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Richard Prather had a bank account of $100 when his wife handed him a telegram from literary agent Scott Meredith on July 7, 1950 indicating his first sale. Although Prather's first novel was unsold, Gold Medal liked his second novel and his Shell Scott character enough to offer a four-book contract, and Prather's Case of the Vanishing Beauty soon set sales records.

Related Topics:
July 7 - 1950

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Authors were attracted to Gold Medal because royalties were based on print runs rather than actual sales, and they received the entire royalty instead of a 50-50 split with a hardback publisher. Gold Medal paid a $2000 advance on an initial print run was for 200,000 copies. When a print run increased to 300,000, the advance was $3000.

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Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury paperback bestseller got a huge boost from Fawcett, as Spillane explained to interviewer Michael Carlson: "Now at that time you had to go through hardback. So I wrote I, the Jury and turned it in to E. P. Dutton. It had been rejected by four different publishers, saying no, no, this is too violent, too dirty... and it was picked up by Roscoe Fawcett, Fawcett Publications. He was a distributor, doing comic books, but he saw the potential, and he went to New American Library, which was Signet Books, and he said 'If you print this book, I'll distribute it.' Now they can't get distribution, so it's a win-win thing for them, but they have to get it published in hardback, so they go to Dutton and say if you print this, we'll do the paperback. So now it's win-win-win, and they offer me $250, and I say no, I need a thousand dollars to build a house in Newburgh, so I get a $1,000 advance, which was unheard of. So Roscoe ordered a million copies, and that was unheard of! So somebody in his outfit says, oh, that wasn't what he meant, he must've meant a quarter million. So they bring out a quarter of a million at the wrong time, cause books sell great at Christmas time, but my book came out between Christmas and New Year, which is death, and it went straight to the top, because it was word of mouth, and it's sold out, and Fawcett says get the rest of them out, and the guy says there aren't any more and Roscoe says whaddaya mean, I ordered a million, and a guy got fired!"

Related Topics:
Mickey Spillane - I, the Jury

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In 1952, when their contract with NAL expired, Fawcett immediately began doing reprints through several imprints. Red Seal started April 1952 and published 22 titles before it folded a year later. Launched September 1955, Premier Books offered non-fiction titles, such as The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet. Crest Books, which also started September 1955, spanned all genres with an emphasis on Westerns and humor, including Best Cartoons from True and Lester Grady's Best from Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. The managing editor of Crest and Premier was Leona Nevler.

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