Best Sellers collection - Oveja Negra

Back in 1983 or 1984, in Spain, the publishing company Planeta (part of the larger Planeta Group) launched a collection of 100 novels in softcover pocket book format under the title "Best Sellers", including several movie novelizations and science fiction novels. In 1984, Oveja Negra from Colombia, in partnership with R.B.A. from Spain, launched a collection under the same name for Colombia and Latin America, also consisting of 100 titles, released betweeen 1984 and 1985, including most (but not all) of the ones from the Planeta collection; some titles whch were too long were split into two volumes, as was done in the original collection, too. The enclosed brochure which came with the first two titles upon their release listed them all. Here in Peru it arrived some time later, between 1985 and 1986, and I acquired the first two at the Monterrey department store, while I got some of the later titles either at the same store or at newsstands.

Here are scans of the brochure, in 16 parts, since it was quite large. First, the front page as it appeared when it was folded (someone had noted some calculations on the front):

And here's the back page:

Upon opening it, this is what the interior looked like:

And after completely unfolding it, here's what it looked like on the other side, with the whole list (sorry, I colored some titles which interested me with felt tip pens over the original white letters):

The list of titles, translated into English, is as follows:

• 1: Roots – Alex Haley
• 2: Love Story – Erich Segal
• 3: Exodus – Leon Uris
• 4: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest – Ken Kesey
• 5: Jaws – Peter Benchley
• 6: Kramer vs. Kramer – Avery Corman
• 7: Star Wars – George Lucas
• 8: From Here to Eternity (I) – James Jones
• 9: From Here to Eternity (II) – James Jones
• 10: Airport – Arthur Hailey
• 11: Return of the Jedi – James Kahn
• 12: All the President's Men – Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward
• 13: Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
• 14: Raiders of the Lost Ark – Campbell Black
• 15: In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
• 16: Valley of the Dolls – Jacqueline Susann
• 17: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ – Lew Wallace
• 18: Come, My Beloved – Pearl S. Buck
• 19: Dracula – Bram Stoker
• 20: King Kong – Delos W. Lovelace
• 21: All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
• 22: Rosemary's Baby – Ira Levin
• 23: Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
• 24: Stories That Scared Even Me – Alfred Hitchcock (Anthology)
• 25: The Little World of Don Camillo – Giovanni Guareschi
• 26: Gone with the Wind (I) – Margaret Mitchell
• 27: Gone with the Wind (II) – Margaret Mitchell
• 28: Foundation – Isaac Asimov
• 29: The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
• 30: The Empire Strikes Back – Donald F. Glut
• 31: White Fang – Jack London
• 32: The Tigers of Mompracem / The Pirates of Malaysia – Emilio Salgari
• 33: The Quiet American – Graham Greene
• 34: The Headless Angel – Vicki Baum
• 35: The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
• 36: The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
• 37: Tai-Pan (I) – James Clavell
• 38: Tai-Pan (II) – James Clavell
• 39: The She-Devils – Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
• 40: The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
• 41: The Andromeda Strain – Michael Crichton
• 42: Breakfast at Tiffany's – Truman Capote
• 43: The Dirty Dozen (I) – E. M. Nathanson
• 44: The Dirty Dozen (II) – E. M. Nathanson
• 45: Topaz – Leon Uris
• 46: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John le Carré
• 47: The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
• 48: To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
• 49: The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
• 50: Not as a Stranger (I) – Morton Thompson
• 51: Not as a Stranger (II) – Morton Thompson
• 52: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
• 53: Foundation and Empire – Isaac Asimov
• 54: Mist – Miguel de Unamuno
• 55: Blood Money – Dashiell Hammett
• 56: The Plumed Serpent – D. H. Lawrence
• 57: Tobacco Road – Erskine Caldwell
• 58: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (I) – Herman Melville
• 59: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (II) – Herman Melville
• 60: Stories No for the Nervous – Alfred Hitchcock (Anthology)
• 61: Tales of Mystery & Imagination – Edgar Allan Poe
• 62: No Orchids for Miss Blandish – James Hadley Chase
• 63: The Wrong Box – Robert Louis Stevenson
• 64: Reflections in a Golden Eye – Carson McCullers
• 65: War and Peace (I) – Leo Tolstoy
• 66: War and Peace (II) – Leo Tolstoy
• 67: The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
• 68: The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
• 69: Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
• 70: Second Foundation – Isaac Asimov
• 71: The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
• 72: The Gambler – Fiódor Dostoievski
• 73: The First Circle (I) – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• 74: The First Circle (II) – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• 75: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus – Mary Shelley
• 76: Arturo's Island – Elsa Morante
• 77: The Innocent Adversary / The Man Who Was Thursday – G. K. Chesterton
• 78: Doomsday 1999 A.D. – Charles Berlitz
• 79: The Underground Man – Ross Macdonald
• 80: Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
• 81: Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
• 82: A Journal of the Plague Year – Daniel Defoe
• 83: The Mustard Seed – Vicki Baum
• 84: The Luck of Barry Lyndon – William Makepeace Thackeray
• 85: Journey into Fear – Eric Ambler
• 86: Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
• 87: The Insulted and Humiliated – Fiódor Dostoievski
• 88: First Blood – David Morrell
• 89: Robinson Crusoe (I) – Daniel Defoe
• 90: Robinson Crusoe (II) – Daniel Defoe
• 91: The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
• 92: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
• 93: Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol
• 94: The Exploits of Rocambole (I) – Ponson du Terrail
• 95: The Exploits of Rocambole (II) – Ponson du Terrail
• 96: Hard Times – Charles Dickens
• 97: The Mother – Maxim Gorky
• 98: Lady Chatterley's Lover – D. H. Lawrence
• 99: Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
• 100: Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller

I couldn't buy the whole collection at the time, so I just bought the titles which interested me the most:

The ISBN for the whole collection was 84-8280-900-8, and for individual volumes, of the form 84-8280-9nn-* (where nn stands for the volume number between 01 and 99 -no idea what it was for volume 100- and * was the checksum value). Similarly, the barcodes at the back cover were of the form 9 788482 809nn*. The back cover and the spine were red, with the title, author and volume number on the spine being printed on yellow characters over a black background, and the Oveja Negra logo (a black sheep) right above the volume number.

And here you can see the original prices from Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, and the evolution of the prices in Peru (in Intis) between 1985 and 1987 in the sales tickets from Monterrey and Scala department stores, from 11.20 Intis in 1985, to 21.60 in 1986, and 24.00 in 1987 (the 8.30 and 16.00 price tags must have belonged to other collections I was buying at the time, most likely Enciclopedia Ilustrada de la Aviación):

In my next post, I'll show you another collection from Oveja Negra which also made it to local stores and newsstands...