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| Parent company | HarperCollins |
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| Founded | 1941; 84 years ago (1941) |
| Founder | Joseph Meyers and Edna Meyers Williams |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York City |
| Fiction genres | Romance |
| Imprints | Avon Impulse, Avon Inspire, Avon Red, Avon Romance |
| Official website | avonromance |
Avon Publications is one of the leading publishers ofromance fiction. At Avon's initial stages, it was an Americanpaperback book andcomic book publisher. The shift in content occurred in the early 1970s with multiple Avon romance titles reaching and maintaining spots in bestseller lists, demonstrating the market and potential profits in romance publication. As of 2010, Avon is animprint ofHarperCollins.
Avon Books was founded in 1941 by theAmerican News Company (ANC) to create a rival toPocket Books. They hired brother and sister Joseph Meyers and Edna Meyers Williams to establish the company. ANC bought outJ.S. Ogilvie Publications, adime novel publisher partly owned by both the Meyers, and renamed it "Avon Publications". They also got intocomic books. "The early Avons were somewhat similar in appearance to the existing paperbacks of Pocket Books, resulting in an immediate and largely ineffective lawsuit by that company. Despite this superficial similarity, though, from early on Meyers differentiated Avon by placing an emphasis on popular appeal rather than loftier concepts of literary merit."[1] The first 40 titles were not numbered. First editions of the first dozen or so have front and rear endpapers with an illustration of a globe. The emphasis on "popular appeal" led Avon to publishghost stories,sexually-suggestive love stories,fantasy novels andscience fiction in its early years, which were far removed in audience appeal from the somewhat more literary Pocket Books competition.
As well as normal-sized paperbacks, Avon publisheddigest-format paperbacks (the size and shape of the present-dayEllery Queen's Mystery Magazine) in series. These includedMurder Mystery Monthly,Modern Short Story Monthly andAvon Fantasy Reader. Many authors highly prized by present-day collectors were published in these editions, includingA. Merritt,James M. Cain,H. P. Lovecraft,Raymond Chandler andRobert E. Howard.
In 1953, Avon Books sold books in the price range of 25¢ to 50¢ (for the Avon "G" series, the "G" standing for "Giant") and were selling more than 20 million copies a year. Their books were characterized byTime magazine as "westerns, whodunits and the kind of boy-meets-girl story that can be illustrated by a ripe cheesecake jacket".[2] At around this time, Avon also began to publish under other imprints, including Eton (1951–1953), Novel Library, Broadway and Diversey. Avon's 35¢ "T" series, introduced in 1953, also had strong mass-market appeal and contains many outstanding examples of the then-popularjuvenile delinquent story. The "T" series also contained many movietie-in editions and the stand-bys of mysteries and science fiction.
Avon was bought by theHearst Corporation in 1959.[3]
In the late 1960s there was a surge of interest inSatanism largely due to the emergence ofAnton LaVey'sChurch of Satan in 1966 and the success of Ira Levin's novelRosemary's Baby in 1967. In 1968, an Avon editor namedPeter Mayer approached Anton LaVey with the idea of publishing a "Satanic Bible", and he asked Anton to author it. Anton obliged, and in December 1969The Satanic Bible was published as an Avon paperback.[4]
In 1972, Avon entered the modernromance genre with the publication ofKathleen Woodiwiss'The Flame and the Flower. The novel went on to sell 2.35 million copies.[5] Avon followed its release with the 1974 publication of Woodiwiss's second novel,The Wolf and the Dove. The next two romances by newcomerRosemary Rogers,Sweet Savage Love andDark Fires, also published in 1974, reached bestseller status. The latter sold two million copies in its first three months of release and the former inspired the name of the genre: "sweet savage romances".[6]
In 1999, theNews Corporation bought outHearst's book division. Avon's hardcover and non-romance paperback lines were moved to sister companyMorrow, leaving Avon as solely a romance publisher.[7]
Avon launched theerotica imprint Avon Red in 2006.[8] Avon developed the event KissCon in 2014, in order to serve the population of romance readers looking for more interaction with their authors and opportunities to strengthen their reading community connections.[7]
For its 75-year anniversary in 2016, Avon published 65 original titles, along with an anniversary edition ofShanna, a romance novel byKathleen E. Woodiwiss, published in 1977 that held a spot on theNew York Times Best Seller list for over thirty weeks. In addition to the re-release, the book included a foreword by the more recent bestseller, and another author represented by Avon,Lisa Kleypas.[7]
From at least 1945 through the mid-1950s, Avon publishedcomic books. Its titles includedhorror fiction, science fiction,Westerns,romance comics,war comics andtalking animal comics. Most titles lasted only a few issues, with the six longest-running detailed in the complete list below:
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