The launchpad for the Blaxploitation paperback boom was undoubtedly Holloway House, a Los Angeles-based publisher. While New York publishers were tentative, Holloway House went all-in on the Black urban experience.
Where the movies had to cut away to avoid an X-rating, Goines’ paperbacks leaned in. He described the abscesses of addiction, the betrayal of the family, and the cold calculus of the stick-up kid with a documentary realism that is still disturbing today. For the urban reader in the 1970s, Goines was not entertainment; he was a warning. Blaxploitation Paperbacks