This picture (left) made me feel quite nostalgic for those old-fashioned Penguins with the orange and white covers and the happy memories of reads gone by.Penguin Australia brought out a budget collection of 25 fiction and 25 non-fiction titles in the Penguin Popular series, and the sales have exceeded all expectations, Tom Reilly in the Age reports.
The Brits (and remember that Penguin is a British company) were more cautious and rejected the idea ... and are most probably kicking themselves after bad sales over Christmas.
The low-price philosophy goes back to the whole ethos on which Allen Lane based his business more than 70 years ago - each book is cheaper than a packet of cigarettes.
I don't know whether we will get to see these copies here, but they are certainly Penguins I would want to pick up!
5 comments:
Still surprising that a major publisher like Penguin (at least the UK one) doesn't use acid-free paper. Their books age fast.
Yes I certainly wish we have those cheaper editions too. Here most books are really so expensive, its a drain on the pockets. I grew up on those cheap Penguin editions!
I love em and have 12 of the series (a combo of fiction and non-fiction titles). I'd have more if I didn't already have some of the titles...
The cover design is pleasantly 20th century modern, and they are cheap if you want a throw-away edition, but really - these books are not fun to collect. As Amir said, they are printed on crappy paper and will go brown within five years or less. So don't waste your money on a row of orange spines.
Of course, very few Australian- or English-printed books are printed on acid-free paper. Some have speculated that Penguin publish in such a way so as to make future secondhand titles as unattractive as possible to the bookbuyer. The acidic timebomb.
"acidic timebomb"
hadn't thought of that as a deliberate strategy but it makes good sense ... sadly.
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