There were only 1,500 bookstores in America in 1939, and only 500 of those had decent credit ratings, as they recollected in the Times. Their greatest early challenge was figuring out distribution avenues. In a piece the Ballantines wrote for the New York Times in 1989, they detailed their early days, working in a small, seventh story loft off 5th Avenue with just two secondhand desks, three chairs and a typewriter, clocking 15 to 18 hour days, seven days a week. While success followed for Penguin in England, the Ballantine’s Penguin U.S.A. When it launched in 1935, the British publishing house Penguin was the first to make high-quality literature affordable with its soon-to-be-ubiquitous well-priced paperbacks. There they became the first American distributors of Penguin paperback books. After the two married, they made the move to New York City, where Ian was born, armed with a $500 wedding present from Betty’s father. She met Ian when she moved to England for school. Meacham calls Betty, who died at her home in Bearsville, New York, at the age of 99 earlier this month, a “quiet magician, working behind the scenes with the writers.”Ī bibliophile from an early age, Betty was born Elizabeth Jones in the then-British colony of India in September 25, 1919. The “introverted and quiet” Betty, who ran the editorial side of the business, also deserves her due for changing the industry. The couple was inseparable, says Beth Meacham, executive editor at science fiction and fantasy publishing company Tor Books, but it’s the “boisterous and charismatic” Ian, who ran the promotional and sales side of their publishing companies, who frequently is given the majority credit for their success. The next time you pick up a science fiction novel, you should take a moment to thank Betty Ballantine for helping bring the genre into the mainstream.īallantine and her husband, Ian, were two halves of a pioneering team that revolutionized the publishing industry in the 20th century.
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