Pulp paperbacks were made to be throwaway reading. They often ended up in the trash, and plenty were trash. Publishers of pulps had the freedom to let writers produce books too out-there for mainstream publishers. There were writers who wanted to tell stories about subjects considered too risque for “normal” readers, so they turned to adults-only paperbacks. They appropriated the conventions of serious Erotic Fiction, Detective Stories, Gothic Romances, Spy Thrillers, Science Fiction, College Humor, Horror/Occult, and Westerns, and then flipped them around so that the globe-trotting, Amazons, space explorers, gold diggers and gangsters, cowboys, aliens, Sam Spades, ghosts, and sexed up sorority girls .

Nearly all the pulps were written under a pseudonym, and most of the cover art and book designs were anonymous.

I began collecting them in the 1980s, but the market for them soon turned hot and by the 21st century, some sold for more than $100 each on eBay.