Betty Ballantine (born September 25, 1919) is a publisher who, with her husband Ian Ballantine, formed Bantam Books in 1945 and Ballantine Books in 1952. They became freelance publishers in the 1970s. Their son Richard is an author and journalist specialising in cycling topics.
Ballantine received a Special Committee Award from L.A.con IV in 2006. In 2007 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Awards. She is a 2008 inductee into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
In 1956, radio humorist/improvisational monologist Jean Shepherd perpetrated a major literary hoax, telling his listeners to ask in bookstores for a non-existent book by a non-existent author: I, Libertine, by "Frederick R. Ewing." The requests and publishing mystery reached such a level that Ian Ballantine asked science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, working with Shepherd, to write such a book, and he did. It's said that Sturgeon fell asleep before finishing it and that Betty Ballantine wrote the final chapter. It was published in September 1956, mostly in paperback, and sold several hundred thousand copies. There is a hardcover edition (also by Ballantine Books), as well as British hardcover and paperback editions.
Famous quotes containing the word betty:
“He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co- ordinate grid system laid over it. The instructor could point to different parts of her and say, “Give me the co-ordinates.”... The Major could see every unit in the Army using his idea.... Hot dog!”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)