Horwitz Publications, Pulp Fiction and the Rise of the Australian Paperback

“This fascinating and meticulously researched book tells a compelling story about the most successful independent Australian publisher, Horwitz, in the mid-20th century. Nette argues that Horwitz impacted the Australian book industry and Australian reading practices by its innovative adoption of merchandising practices and its ability to tread the fine line between feeding readers the salacious and sensationalist fare they wanted while keeping the censors at bay. This is a valuable and immensely readable story about the Americanisation of Australian popular fiction in the mid-twentieth century and the Australianisation of American genres at the same time.” — Hsu-Ming Teo, Associate Professor and Head of Department, Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature, Macquarie University, AUS.

“Nette is a great storyteller, attending to texts, books as artifacts, production, and marketing in narrating the cultural history of paperbacks in Australia. He makes a major contribution to the international study of pulp paperbacks by investigating how the particular economic and political circumstances of Australia shaped the market.” — Erin Smith, Professor of American Studies, The University of Texas at Dallas, USA.

"This book provides readers with a detailed, thoughtful and revelatory account of Australia’s post-war “pulp fiction” publishing industry as it primarily focuses on a historically neglected phase of Australian popular (mass) culture." — Kevin Patrick, Adjunct Professor, Department of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University, USA.

"Horwitz Publications is an effective populariser of Australian literature. It negotiates the circuit of modern publishing—production, distribution, and reception—in a way that shaped the Australian book market itself. The topic of study and Nette’s style of writing would appeal to many general readers, including fan cultures built up around (Australian) pulp fiction and librarians and archivists who are invested in studying popular literature." — Kinohi Nishikawa, Associate Professor of English and African American Studies, Princeton University, USA.

It is one of the very few books about pulp that resists the temptation to indulge in easy laughs and lavish reproductions of the cover art for its own sake—which is somewhat ironic, because Nette has done more than anyone else to illuminate the lives and careers of the artists who worked in the Australian “pulp jungle” in the decades after the Second World War. […] It is a meticulous work of scholarship that will stand as a landmark study of Australian popular publishing. —Script & Print

Nette’s book makes a significant contribution to the understanding of mid-twentieth century Australian cultural life. He has wrested a forgotten but vital field of cultural expression from its unruly ephemerality and provided a clear and rich account for us to hold and consider. - Journal of Australian, Canadian, and Aotearoa New Zealand Studies