Friday, September 12, 2014

FFB: Australian Vintage Paperback Guide -- Graeme Flanagan

Being interested in paperbacks, I naturally had to have a copy of this book.  My primary collecting (or accumulating) interest is in U.S. paperbacks, but I do have some from Australia, mainly because the Original Novels Foundation reprinted some of my favorite writers  in digest form under several imprints, primarily Phantom Books and Original Novels.  Sometimes covers similar to the U. S. editions were used.  Sometimes covers from U.S editions got put on different titles.  Anyway, I like to have the variant printings if they're not too expensive.  Unfortunately collectors have driven up the prices on the Australian digests, so I don't often buy them now.  And if they have to be shipped from Australia, the postage costs are sometimes staggering.

So instead of having most of the books, I have this nice reference volume, which is illustrated with many B&W cover scans and two pages of color scans.  Some of the more intriguing covers are from books I've never seen, or in some cases never heard of.  That just adds to the fun.

The book was originally published by Gary Lovisi under his Gryphon Books imprint, and it's hard to come by now.  If you run across a cheap copy, grab it.

1 comment:

George said...

I'm sure there was a big CARTER BROWN section in this book. I'll have to look for a copy online.