Publisher Herbert W. Alexander

Herbert W. Alexander, retired publisher and editor in chief of Pocket Books, died Wednesday at Mount Sinai Hospital here. He was 78 and had retired from Pocket Books in 1974 after building a reputation as a shrewd negotiator for reprint rights. In his final years he was a free-lance editor for various publishing firms.

At Pocket Books, Alexander built a strong inventory of mysteries by acquiring reprints of books by Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Ellery Queen, Dashiell Hammett and others. In 1950, he purchased Nelson Algren’s “Man With the Golden Arm” for $25,000, a record reprint price at the time. He also acquired “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” by Herman Wouk.

Pocket Books established Trident Press in 1961, after acquiring rights to Harold Robbins’ works, and used the new company to publish Robbins’ novels in hard cover. Alexander became president of Trident as well as editor of a number of Robbins’ books, including “The Carpetbaggers.”

Alexander also was a director and vice president of Simon & Schuster, which has owned Pocket Books since the late 1950s.