Sleaze

I define "sleaze" as using sensationalism to explore the borders of what is considered acceptable in the current literary environment. The closer a book, topic or cover gets to that line, the "sleazier" it is. If it crosses the line, it would pick up such monikers as "radical," "pornographic," "underground," or the catchall: "XXX."

HOW the publisher accomplished the "Sleaze" image sometimes made all the difference. Many of these books published in the 50's and 60's might have been marketed as hardboiled mystery or romance novels, but the publisher believed that the work could make a larger profit by packaging it as a sexually oriented work.

By far, the largest producers of sleaze in the 60's were Beacon and Midwood. Beacon was the first regular paperback-sized book published by the Universal Publishing Company, which also issued such labels as Uni Books, Intimate, Royal Giant, Stallion and Fiesta. The Beacon label would eventually give way to Softcover Library, starting with #B793, but it kept the same lighthouse colophon.

Midwood was published by Tower Publications. Beginning with #32-401, they are identified as Midwood Tower Books. Later in its run, Midwood would print more and more "Double-Novels," often with a split cover depicting the two titles with a single illustration, usually a photograph (these cover photos tended to be generic pictures of scantily clad women, and had no bearing whatever to the works themselves).

As the 60's progressed, other publishers cropped up that began printing actual "sex novels." Most did not identify the author. It was quite obvious that these books held little content that was not sexually oriented, and there was no effort made to show otherwise. There are very few in my database, but the ones I've included as examples have such titles as "Schoolroom Stud," and "Seagoing Sexpot." You get the idea. The Adult labels of the 70's and 80's, such as the later Beeline and Liverpool Library book are not, in my opinion, candidates for "sleaze." They've crossed the line. Not that I'm necessarily opposed ... they're just not part of this venue.

If you really love sleaze covers, check out the "Sexy Digests" and the "Other Publishers" folders, as well as Popular Library, Gold Medal, various Avon publications, Berkley, Crest, and Monarch.

I've attempted to keep books together in the database within publishers' groupings. Therefore, I've moved several publishers OUT of the "Sleaze" folder that probably have a right to be here. For example, most covers by Zenith are pretty sleazy. But I simply couldn't bring myself to put "The Oral Roberts Reader" in this group, so I moved the whole publisher out and into the "Other Publishers" folder.

NOTE - I've put the publisher's name on the first image of each series. Only book numbers follow that. If you lose track, click the image and see the publisher's name in the picture's web address.

The Sleaze Folder was Updated in January, 2008