Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

Anne Rice opened the bloodgates—er, floodgates—for everyone to take a stab at the vampire novel, and the variations were endless. There were Nazi vampires (Darkness on the Ice), rock star vampires named Timmy (Vampire Junction), splatterpunk vampires working out of Times Square strip joints (Live Girls), 19th-century riverboat gambler vampires (Fevre Dream), and always the standard-issue romantic vampire who lived eternally down through the ages. Credit 121

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Rise of the Blockbuster

There was nothing the ’80s respected more than blockbuster success, and only brand names—V.C. Andrews, Anne Rice, Stephen King—would survive the decade. Blockbuster books permanently changed the publishing landscape, and it was all thanks to power tools.

The Thor Power Tool Co. case of 1979 radically changed how books were sold. This U.S. Supreme Court decision upheld the Internal Revenue Service’s rule that companies could no longer “write down,” or lower the value of, unsold inventory. Previously, publishers pulped about 45 percent of their annual inventory, but that still left them with warehouses full of midlist novels that had steady but unspectacular sales. The pressure to sell quickly was off because publishers could list the value of the unsold inventory far below the books’ cover price. After the Thor decision, these books were valued at full cover price, eliminating the tax write-off. Suddenly, the day of the midlist novel was over. Paperbacks were given six weeks on the racks to find an audience, then it was off to the shredder.

A successful book now had to sell blockbuster numbers. And manufacturing blockbusters took a team, starting with the blurb writer, who created the breathlessly enthusiastic marketing copy for the back cover. Then the marketing department came up with flashy gimmicks to help each book stand out in a crowded field. Publishers gave out porcelain roses, perfume, and garters bearing the names of their latest romances.

But the most powerful promotional tool was the cover, presided over by the art directors, who were treated like kings. Art directors set the tone for cover artists, often drawing sketches of what they wanted to see. They made the big-picture decisions. The hardcover art for Peter Benchley’s Jaws was a stylized shark with no teeth. For the iconic paperback (see here), Bantam’s art director Len Leone kept the basic layout, but hired Roger Kastel to paint an ultrarealistic, sharp-toothed shark instead. The paperback sold 6.2 million copies.

James Plumeri at NAL had a sophisticated sense of style, and his Stephen King covers were designed to intrigue readers with their quiet, centered images and plain black backgrounds. He left the title off the cover of ’Salem’s Lot, wanting readers to pick up the book and open it to see what it was called. Instead, bookstores shelved it backward, leading to a quick second printing with the title prominently displayed.

Milton Charles came up with iconic cover treatments for best sellers like The World According to Garp and Jacqueline Susann’s The Love Machine before moving to Pocket, where he worked on Flowers in the Attic. Like all art directors, he was a problem solver, and the problem boiled down to how to turn a book browser into a book buyer.

In a 1977 interview, Charles declared himself “unenthusiastic about cover tricks” such as the use of foil and die-cut covers. But after the success of the V. C. Andrews books he became an advocate of foil covers, embossed covers, stepback art, and die-cut covers, because ultimately the point was to sell books. If foil caught the reader’s attention, then foil it would be.

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Haunted and Haunting

Unlike the power wielded by art directors in the ’70s and ’80s publishing world, the cover artist’s lot was not a happy one. Not only were their signatures cropped off covers, but they were rarely credited inside the book; their art was flipped, reused, and rephotographed. Publishers resisted crediting cover artists to avoid creating stars who could demand better terms. Cover artists were destined for obscurity.

Until recently, one of the most obscure was Jerzy Zielezinski, aka George Ziel. With more than three hundred covers to his name, Ziel was a machine, capable of turning out three paintings a month for romances, crime stories, and celebrity biographies. He was responsible for plenty of horror novels but was most famous for his distinctive gothics. From the ’60s through the ’70s, gothic romances were the bread and butter of publishers like Ace, Lancer, and Avon. The covers were formulaic in excelsis, inevitably featuring a woman running from a house with one lit window. Variations: maybe she was running from a chateau, fleeing a keep, or evacuating a shack.