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8 - Competing with the Sexual Spectacle: Horwitz and the Mainstreaming of the Erotic, 1967–1972

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2022

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Summary

Locally produced paperback titles and reprinted material from overseas remained Horwitz's key business in the second half of the 1960s, and one of its principal concerns going into the 1970s. Indeed, except for comics, which Horwitz ceased publishing altogether around 1966, the company grew as it moved into the second half of the decade. It continued to publish trade magazines, and the Grahame Book Company and its educational publishing arm both expanded. By the late 1960s, Horwitz had also relocated from the corner of Martin Place and Elizabeth Street in the Sydney CBD into a larger, open-plan office in North Sydney. ‘My vision of publishing houses came from movies’, recalls Australian writer and film critic John Baxter, who was employed on a contract basis to edit Horwitz paperbacks for a period in 1967. ‘Horwitz was more like a real estate office or a firm of accountants’. As previously noted, the company's paperback publishing division never directly employed many people because none of the authors worked in-house. Horwitz's entry in the 1966 membership directory of the publishing industry's peak body, the Australian Book Publishing Association (ABPA – renamed the Australian Publisher's Association in 1996) lists seven staff: three editors (including Anne Oxenham and Lyall Moore, who was also a managing director), a sales manager, a publicity person, a manager of rights and permissions (Betty Benjamin), and Ray Fuller as ‘Production Manager’. To these can be added Stanley Horwitz, chair and chief executive, his son Peter, who was active in the business in the second half of the 1960s – neither of whom are named in the directory – as well as individuals, like Baxter, employed on a contract basis. The 1966–1967 edition of The Writers’ and Photographers’ Marketing Guide describes the company as publishing ‘original paperback novels and non-fiction works […] Also publishes several series of manuals, handbooks, magazines and photographic soft-cover books’.

The desired length for paperback fiction was between 45,000 and 60,000 words. ‘Payment for novels depends on merit, but usually a standard initial payment of $200 is made, against a royalty of 7 1/2 per cent’.

A clear indication of Horwitz's continuing publishing success was the inclusion of a number of its authors in a cover story, entitled ‘The Fictionaires’, in the 25 February 1967 edition of the Australian national current affairs magazine, The Bulletin.

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Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2022

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