Double or Flip books

BardSkye · Nov 4, 2006

A long time back there was a fad in mass-market paperbacks of releasing what I would call "flip" books. Two full books bound together so that what would have been the back cover of one was instead the front cover of the other. I wonder why it was discontinued and what today's readers would think if they came across one now in the bookstores.

Opinions?

ChaosTitan · Nov 4, 2006

Well, I never bought them, so I'm guessing that millions of others didn't, too.

janetbellinger · Nov 4, 2006

I never heard of them so obviously I didn't buy one. I'd be really steamed if I came across fiction for grown-ups done up in that way. Perhaps if it was Thomas the Tank stories for kids it would be fun for them.

Berry · Nov 4, 2006

This is called "dos-a-dos" binding, from the French for "back to back". Ace published SF and Fantasy this way starting in 1952 until the early 70s. There's an entire sub-culture of book collectors who specialize in them.

Later Tor did some "Tor Double Novels" as well, and Yard Dog Press does some "Double Dogs".

I have a number of Ace Doubles in my own collection. Some are by quite well known authors like Poul Anderson.

Wikipedia has a list of them. It's not clear why Ace abandoned the practice; perhaps the rigid length requirements was too confining, or sales didn't justify continuing.

FennelGiraffe · Nov 4, 2006

I used to read some of those. Not my favorites, simply because I prefer longer works, but it was a useful way of publishing novellas.

Maryn · Nov 4, 2006

I actively disliked them, the reason being that in my experience, one novel was always pretty good, the other pretty poor (even when by the same author), so I was paying extra for something I didn't want piggybacked onto something I did.

I also remember the minor annoyance of picking it up the wrong way, with the wrong cover toward me, and not finding my bookmark, because instead of being at the top it would be sticking out the bottom.

Maryn, easily annoyed at times

Carrie in PA · Nov 4, 2006

Maryn said:
I also remember the minor annoyance of picking it up the wrong way, with the wrong cover toward me, and not finding my bookmark, because instead of being at the top it would be sticking out the bottom.

I remember doing that, too.

But I loved them. Probably because it was nifty and I'm easily amused.

veinglory · Nov 4, 2006

I still see them occassionally but think they are annoying and gimmicky.

PeeDee · Nov 4, 2006

My wife collected the old ACE flip books. It's part of her collection of Andre Norton books (so very close to complete...). WE have a bunch and I think the idea of it is potentially nifty, if not always the execution.

It's fun to have a novel by "Andrew North" and then flip it over and have a novel by Philip K. Dick

Maryn is right, though. Usually, one of the books really stinks. Sometimes, they both do. Still, I sure own a lot of 'em...

K_Woods · Nov 4, 2006

My husband has one of the Tor double novels -- Arthur C. Clarke's "A Meeting with Medusa" and Kim Stanley Robinson's "Green Mars." I have no idea where he got it, especially since he's not into Clarke as far as I know, and only recently into Robinson's Mars series. Honestly, I don't know if he's even read either one.

I didn't realize these books had their own cultural niche! Maybe I should keep an eye out for them from now on...

PeeDee · Nov 4, 2006

I think they're probably one of those things where nobody bought them or liked them, and thus they're suddenly a collector's item.

jpserra · Nov 4, 2006

Not enough readers...

BardSkye said:
A long time back there was a fad in mass-market paperbacks of releasing what I would call "flip" books. Two full books bound together so that what would have been the back cover of one was instead the front cover of the other. I wonder why it was discontinued and what today's readers would think if they came across one now in the bookstores.

Opinions?

Books just are not as popular, per capita, as they used to be, and the margin on books is so tight that it is an expensive item to make.

[According to several printer friends of mine.]

John

Jamesaritchie · Nov 4, 2006

Ace

I used to read the Ace Double Westerns, but never cared for the format.

Jamesaritchie · Nov 4, 2006

booiks

jpserra said:
Books just are not as popular, per capita, as they used to be, and the margin on books is so tight that it is an expensive item to make.

[According to several printer friends of mine.]

John

Per capita or not, more books are sold now than ever before, and the double format is actually cheaper than printing two books. It just isn't very popular, for some reason. It never was, after a brief flair of interest when first tried.

Many readers do like more than one novel printed together, and this is still done fairly often. I have several hardcovers here that contain from three to five novels by well-known writers. It's the flip format that most readers objected to.

I never liked the flip format, and I can't even say why. No real reason I could put a finger on, but I simply did not like them.

I have heard there were often royalty disagreements when books by different writers were put in the double format, but I really don't know the ins and outs of the issue. I wasn't involved in that side of publishing at the time. Maybe Jaws would know more about this?

PeeDee · Nov 4, 2006

Jamesaritchie said:
I wasn't involved in that side of publishing at the time. Maybe Jaws would know more about this?

Because I'm not wearing glasses, I thought that said maybe jews would know more about this and I just about had a heart attack.

*phew*

I have that Sargasso of Space by Andre Norton and whatever novel it is by Philip K. Dick. I can't check, my books are in boxes right now.

I don't like them particularly either, and I don't like flip comic books either. Why, I don't know.

AnneMarble · Nov 4, 2006

Jamesaritchie said:
I have heard there were often royalty disagreements when books by different writers were put in the double format, but I really don't know the ins and outs of the issue. I wasn't involved in that side of publishing at the time. Maybe Jaws would know more about this?

Dean Koontz wrote one half of an Ace Double when he was just starting out. And I think this anecdote comes from an interview he did years later.

He was told that he was getting paid less than the going rate (let's say $500 instead of $700) when his double came out, because his part of the book was a bit shorter, and that the other author was getting the difference because his book was longer. Years later, he met that author and told him that, and the author said someting like, "That's funny, he told me the same thing!" So instead of getting $700 each, both got $500 each.

I think I know which famous SF publisher pulled that stunt, but I'm not sure it was him, so I won't mention the name.

BardSkye · Nov 4, 2006

Thanks for all the answers. I actually liked the concept (in comics, too) and was just wondering if it had been reader dislike or economics that made them disappear.

Jamesaritchie · Nov 5, 2006

PeeDee said:
Because I'm not wearing glasses, I thought that said maybe jews would know more about this and I just about had a heart attack.

*phew*

I have that Sargasso of Space by Andre Norton and whatever novel it is by Philip K. Dick. I can't check, my books are in boxes right now.

I don't like them particularly either, and I don't like flip comic books either. Why, I don't know.

Well, my mother's side of the family is Jewish, so I suppose I could have used that as an excuse.

Jamesaritchie · Nov 5, 2006

AnneMarble said:
Dean Koontz wrote one half of an Ace Double when he was just starting out. And I think this anecdote comes from an interview he did years later. He was told that he was getting paid less than the going rate (let's say $500 instead of $700) when his double came out, because his part of the book was a bit shorter, and that the other author was getting the difference because his book was longer. Years later, he met that author and told him that, and the author said someting like, "That's funny, he told me the same thing!" So instead of getting $700 each, both got $500 each.

I think I know which famous SF publisher pulled that stunt, but I'm not sure it was him, so I won't mention the name.

I hadn't heard that story, but I've heard similar ones. I wish someone would check in who was involved in the heyday of flip books.

PeeDee · Nov 5, 2006

My only real complaint is from a collector's standpoint. They printed those doubles (ACE especially) with very cheap cardstock and paper, and very lousy glue. These things do NOT age very well. We've had to be very careful with ours. Forget about reading them.

BardSkye · Nov 5, 2006

I had actually been toying with the idea of a flip book for a couple of my youngsters. Most everything seems to go in and out of fashion and I wondered if it might be time to revive the concept, at least in YA.

You've all probably saved me a whole bunch of money. A rep point to everyone in thanks!

Stacia Kane · Nov 5, 2006

I remember when they tried something like this with romance novels--the girl's side of the story on one side, the guy's on the other.

I don't think the concept sold well. I sure didn't buy any.

PeeDee · Nov 5, 2006

DecemberQuinn said:
I remember when they tried something like this with romance novels--the girl's side of the story on one side, the guy's on the other.

The girl's side was 275 pages long, the guy's side was four photocopied pages out of Sport's Illustrated.

Dave.C.Robinson · Nov 5, 2006

I remember the Ace ones, thought they were pretty good when I was about 14. They were published for about 20 years so they must have paid for themselves or Ace would have stopped doing it a lot faster.

I think part of the reason was that it was a way to sell novellas through the mass market since most were too short to be real standalone novels.

Maryn · Nov 5, 2006

Dave makes a good point, that it made marketable a length that readers would have balked at paying full price for. (Did that make sense?)

Maryn, at times senseless

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