Woolworth's and Cheap Paperbacks in the 1970s

Do you remember when Woolie’s used to be the place to go for cheap paperbacks? At a time in the mid 1970s when new paperbacks cost on the region of 30p, cheap paperbacks in Woolworth’s were as little as 9p each, frequently piled high in a jumble, presumably set out by the same store associate who managed the "pick’n’mix" sweet displays. 

The books on sale were generally second-tier publisher American mass-market paperbacks rather than British-published  paperbacks (distinguishable at that time by the former’s coarser paper and less flexible spines), and had obscure publisher names like Award, Star or Tempo. In many cases the edges of the pages were coloured red,or green, or yellow, presumably to help the books stand out in US paperback spinner racks. I assume that Thorpe & Porter or World Distributors were importing these books from the States, in parallel with their imports of comics.

My earliest purchase in this sub-genre was a reprint of the Shadow pulp reprint “Grove of Doom” by Walter Gibson, writing as Maxwell Grant. Tempo had actually published “Grove of Doom” in 1969, but it did not appear in Portsmouth’s main Woolworth until 1972. It was a one-off, presumably inspired by the success of the Bantam Doc Savage reprints, and the Shadow novels published by Belmont in the mid 1960s.

This purchase was quickly followed by some crime stories by pulp era stalwart Frank Gruber (The Laughing Jackass ; Market for Murder),  Belmont/Flamingo reprinting some of his earlier novels from the 1940s. I believe that these were published in 1973. I'm sure the copies I bought were marked down significantly from their 25p cover price.

Although initially these books plundered the pulp back catalogs of Street & Smith and their brethren, by 1974 a major focus of these cheap books quickly became the TV tie-in, along with film tie-ins to certain genre films (Westerns, Crime, Sci-Fi) where a script novelization could be easily commissioned to a good, even well-known, writer in need of a few extra dollars(or quid) to keep the lights on while they labored on their own more respected literary projects.

Of course, there had been earlier tie-in paperbacks sold in the UK in the late 1960s -  the Man From Uncle books published by 4-Square come to mind, as do The Avengers (Steed and Mrs Peel) paperbacks by Panther - but those were full-price, well produced fare which carried a sheen of respectability - unlike the cheap mass-market imports from the States.

These books had latched on to popular culture, and were not going to let it go.

In the days before home video recorders (which started to emerge in the UK around 1976, but did not really go mainstream until 1980) the TV tie-in book was the only way to get a personal copy of your favourite show or film, apart from an audio recording. The appearance of the innovative, but short-lived   “Fotonovel” from Bantam on UK bookshelves in the last week of January 1978 (when Star Trek’s City on The Edge of Forever was published as a series of 300 photos with speech bubbles) marked the beginning of the end of the peak TV tie-in era.

So for a glorious 5 years I avidly sought out these imported gems in parallel to my comic collecting. Looking through past issues of our fanzine SuperStuff, I can relive my interest.

The new book report in SuperStuff #3 (1974-08-11) highlighted the series of books based on the "Mystery Movie" series McCloud and Hec Ramsey. In addition, a reprinting of Beneath The Planet of the Apes by Michael Avallone had just arrived from Bantam. [This book was a must-have for UK “Apes” enthusiasts, as the film itself had been classified “AA” at the cinema, making it unavailable to those of us younger than 14.]

SuperStuff #5 (1975-08-18) reported that I was on the lookout for a copy of Cannon - The Golden Bullet, by Paul Denver. Already five books had been published in that series.

The UK Public’s obsession with the TV cop show in the 1970s, particularly Cannon and Kojak, resulted in nine Kojak books written by Victor Miller and at least nine Cannon books, many of which were written specifically for the UK market by Douglas Enefer writing as Paul Denver, and printed/published first by World Distributors in a look and feel that mirrored US mass-market paperback conventions.

The Cannon books were all original stories, and more books were published in the UK than in the US. Contrastingly, the Kojak books were episode adaptations mostly from Season 1. Only five of the nine books written by Victor Miller were published in the UK. One of note that was omitted for UK publication was Therapy In Dynamite, the novelisation of the BBC-banned episode of Kojak. Incidentally, that episode has never been broadcast by the BBC, even during the repeat run in later years.

UK Edition retitled the novelisation of "Death Is Not A Passing Grade"

Of the film tie-ins by cheap paperbacks, most prominent to me were the adaptations of the Apes movies by likes of Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven and David Gerrold. George Alex Effinger wrote four POTA TV tie-ins.

Joe Millard cornered the Western market with his adaptations of Clint Eastwood’s “Dollar” westerns and followed up with a number of new novels about the Man with No Name.

I’m currently re-acquiring old copies of many of these books, primarily for the nostalgia value. They were very much a feature of the Bronze Age for me….an cool adjunct to it, at least, when cheap publishing reflected popular culture, only to be replaced as the emergence of new technology made the demand obsolete.

I find it interesting that despite the popular success of these paperbacks in the US, that there were no associated comic strips produced in the United States. It was left to the UK to bring the TV cops to the comic page.  We'll dive into that in more detail next time.

© Ian Baker