What is a Dime Novel?

What is a dime novel?

The term 'dime novels' is typically (and in this case) used to describe a genre of short novels, massively popular amongst the American public from 1860 -1900, that were sold for roughly a dime (or even less!).

Not dissimilar to comic books as we know them now, these bite-sized stories were often only sections of larger, overarching plotlines. Dime novels would be released in small fragments, so after getting you hooked on one issue, you would be likely to return to buy the second installment upon it's release to know how the story continues.

While dime novels could cover any subgenre found in pulp fiction, from detectives to pirates, the most popular focus of this era was, by far and beyond, the Western.