One reason for the success of the iPhone is its size. Steve Jobs was a student of
ergonomics and understood that a smart phone needed to be large enough to have legible
graphics but small enough to fit in the hand. Apple apparently hit that “sweet spot” in
designing it.

Clive Thompson, writing in the Smithsonian, explains how a similar phenomenon
occurred seventy-five years ago with another American innovator. Robert Fair de Graff
realized he could change the way people read books, by making them smaller. Paperback
books changed America’s reading habits. To understand this, we have to look at the
world before paperback books.

Good fiction and nonfiction books were not that easy to obtain. First, there were
only about 500 bookstores in America, mostly clustered in the big cities. Second, books
back then were expensive. A hardcover book cost $2.50. That is equivalent to paying $40
for a book today.

De Graff changed everything when he got the backing of Simon & Schuster to
launch Pocket Books. These small paperback books not only easily fit in the but they
were much less expensive. They sold for a mere 25 cents.

He also worked on distribution. The Pocket sold in grocery stores, drugstores, and
airport terminals. We take for granted that we can buy books in these venues today, but
that was revolutionary back in his day. This publishing revolution was a great success.
Everyone was reading paperback books. Within two years, Simon & Schuster sold 17
million.

Historian Kenneth C. Davis in his book, Two-Bit Culture, explained that the
publisher “couldn’t keep up with the demand. They tapped into a huge reservoir of
Americans who nobody realized wanted to read.”

Today, of course, Americans read not only printed books but e-books in a variety
of formats. So as we are watching this new electronic revolution in publishing and
reading, we should remember the earlier revolution when paperback books encouraged
more people to read.