Table of Contents   ::   Introduction, The Smut Peddlers by Adam Parfrey   ::   Softcore Publishing: The East Coast Scene, By Jay Gertzman   ::   West Coast Blue, By Stephen J. Gertz   ::   Cover excerpts from all chapters   ::   Sin-A-Rama front and back covers


Softcore Publishing: The East Coast Scene
Jay Gertzman
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Softcore sleaze paperbacks have an erotic promise that holds its own—the libidinous nudges of titles, blurbs and cover art, even the suggestions offered by the authors’ names. In the earlier ’60s, four-letter words were strictly taboo. Not only were “cock,” “balls,” and “pussy” inadvisable, but even the scientific designations for the sex organs were considered problematic. Unlike hardcore, the curtain rose in the first act, not the last: the sex scenes had to be in proportion to the bulk of the story, so setting and characterization were necessary.

As a sort of requiem for the genre, Olympia Press published, in 1971, The Dirtiest Book in Town, a fictional collection of softcore covers, blurbs, and text. (1) The storylines and euphemisms concocted were a satiric tribute to the verbal and narrative skills needed to write such books. There was, for example, the stream-of-consciousness gambit:

Suddenly he was pumping and pounding and gasping and grunting and groaning and moaning and grinding and pushing and pulling and shoving and tearing.

The science fiction variation:

They all had seven breasts, and not as we know them on Earth women—much larger, with nipples flaming red, and erect. The usual female opening was in the back, and in the front they all had oversized penes [sic]—three times larger than any known on Earth men... Then Philiotina, their chieftain, forced her huge erection into Bill’s anus—way up to the base—while two others held his legs apart as she forced her hugeness in and out...


And the clinical report:

Then he [vernacular for osculated] my [vernacular for mammalia (sic)]. I spun around and started to [vernacular for fellatio]. He [vernacular for digitalized] my [vernacular for genitalia]. Moments later we were [vernacular for copulating].


The softcore paperback sex pulp had a long span of popularity, a large readership, and a complex publishing history. It may have been a literary lightweight, but it took a lot of effort to get it to work correctly to bring in the money. And it certainly did do that. By 1969, according to the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, in New York City alone, publishers issued per month, respectively, 20 titles with press runs of at least 75,000 copies (Midwood-Tower, with yearly sales of 7.2 to 9 million copies) and 12 titles with runs of about 25,000 (Bee-Line; about 3.1 million copies sold for the year).

The softcore paperback sex pulp had a long span of popularity, a large readership, and a complex publishing history. It may have been a literary lightweight, but it took a lot of effort to get it to work correctly to bring in the money. And it certainly did do that. By 1969, according to the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, in New York City alone, publishers issued per month, respectively, 20 titles with press runs of at least 75,000 copies (Midwood-Tower, with yearly sales of 7.2 to 9 million copies) and 12 titles with runs of about 25,000 (Bee-Line; about 3.1 million copies sold for the year). (2)

I.

Before we begin, we must be clear that popular paperback publishing after World War II was based on the procedures used to publish and distribute mass-market magazines. The antecedent of the adult bookstore was the urban newsstand. Successful booksellers and publishers understood what sold magazines, how their distributors operated, who bought them, and why the customers came back for more of the same. Paperback books, as well the digest-sized newsstand pulps that preceded them, were written and marketed as if they were magazines. Until 1957, the American News Company distributed both. Distributors were the most influential people in the business, for it was they who delivered, and placed in racks, the publications.

Continued...

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