I've been collecting mass market paperbacks (those small pocket paperbacks that really only exist these days at airports) since I was in high school in the late 1980s. Much of this collection fed my long-running Judging Books By Their Covers blog post series which I wrote for years here on Justseeds. Now I've got boxes and boxes of books, and I'm slowly sorting and selling them off in sets at an amazing political bookstore and record shop in Brooklyn, NY called the P.I.T. (or Property is Theft).
 
 
Each month I produce a risograph one-sheet that gives background to the books, is a list of what's available, and a collection of cover images. I've been running the project for a year and a half now, and this set features 5 zines (including 2 double, oversized issues) from the second half of 2025 focused on mass market paperbacks about:
13: Latin America
14/15: African Fiction
16. (Cover designs by) Ben Shahn
17. (Cover designs by) David King
18/19. Communism, Socialism, and Revolution
 
 
This time around, issue 13 is the only one that is 4 pages, issues 16 and 17 are both double issues with 8 pages, and issues 14/15 and 18/19 each have 12 pages and dozens of featured covers. I keep trying to use these as a way to practice my design for riso.
All of these come packed in a duotone riso-printed envelope, along with a 4-color riso-printed poster featuring a cover from January/February 2026's collection of Eastern European Science Fiction books!
 
 
The first set of 6 zines is sold out. The second set is available HERE.
