Betty Ballantine, who with her late husband, Ian Ballantine, "helped invent the modern paperback and vastly expand the market for science fiction and other genres through such blockbusters as The Hobbit and Fahrenheit 451," died on Tuesday, the AP reported. She was 99.
In their early 20s, the Ballantines began their publishing career by establishing the U.S. division of Penguin Books, introducing quality paperbacks to the U.S. In 1945, they founded Bantam Books, then part of Grosset & Dunlap. Seven years later, they set up their own publishing house, Ballantine Books. Both legendary imprints are now owned by Penguin Random House.
As the AP recounted, "Charging as little as a quarter, [the Ballantines] published everything from reprints of Mark Twain novels to paperbacks of contemporary bestsellers. They helped established the paperback market for science fiction, Westerns and other genres, releasing original works and reprints by J.R.R. Tolkien, Arthur C. Clarke and H.P. Lovecraft, among others. They made their books available in drugstores, railroad stations and other non-traditional outlets. They issued some paperbacks simultaneously with the hardcover, instead of waiting several months or longer."
Betty Ballantine edited Shirley MacLaine's Out on a Limb and wrote a fantasy novel, The Secret Oceans, published in 1994. The Ballantines were voted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2008.