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In the late 1930s, Simon & Schuster planned to create the first U.S. mass-market publisher, utilizing modern production techniques and distributing the resulting inexpensive paperback books through magazine distributors and outlets. It was the firm’s intention, as Robert Fair de Graff said, to provide “the widest variety of books at the lowest price to the greatest number of people.” The result was Pocket Books, a series of pocket-sized paperback reprints of classics and recent bestsellers.
Pocket Books initially test-marketed the idea in New York City with ten titles. Artists were commissioned to design new cover art for the paperbacks, and the partners set a 25-cent cover price to further attract customers. At the same time, Frank J. Lieberman created the bespectacled kangaroo named Gertrude that would become Pocket’s logo.