The label « Le livre de poche » appeared in 1953 as the new version of an old collection operated by Hachette since the thirties. The new serie had an unbelievable success — as the 60 000 copies of each first printing were almost sold out after a few weeks or months most of the time — and in the sixties the major publishing french companies decided to have their own pocket book collections. That is exactly when — in between 1964 and 1965 — some writers and people from the book world entered into a violent debate about the good effects and the bad points of these popular series that were made to be destroyed after reading, as their promoters thought at the beginning. What about pocket books in France seventy years later ? Are they about to disappear or stronger than ever ?