Belmont Books

Belmont Books, also known as Belmont Productions, was an American publisher of pulp fiction paperback books founded in 1960. It specialized in science fiction, horror and fantasy, with titles appearing from 1961 through 1971. The company published books by such notable authors as Philip K. Dick, Philip José Farmer, Lin Carter, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long, and Gardner Fox. Belmont was owned by the same company that owned Archie Comics. According to the son of one of the founders, the title of the company came from Belmont Park, as the owners were fans of horse racing.

Belmont's initial offerings were four titles — a Western, a mystery, a science fiction book, and a detective book. Once they got going, Belmont published about 12 titles per month, with print runs of between 30,000–70,000 copies. Rather than bookstores, their books were sold in railroad stations, airports, bus terminals, drug stores, and the lobbies of office buildings and hotels.

Belmont published a number of science fiction anthologies, all edited by Ivan Howard, that featured content from the pulp sci-fi magazines Science Fiction, Future Fiction, and Dynamic Science Fiction, all of which had been published by Belmont co-owner Louis Silberkleit.

Beginning in 1963, Belmont published nine updated The Shadow novels. The first one, Return of The Shadow, was by Walter B. Gibson. The remaining eight, published from 1964–1967, were written by Dennis Lynds under the pen name "Maxwell Grant."

From 1969 to 1970, Belmont published a series of sword and sorcery novels by Gardner Fox, featuring the barbarian character Kothar.

The firm merged with Tower Books (the parent company of Tower Comics) in 1971, forming Belmont Tower, under which name it continued publishing from 1972 through 1980.