Parliament News appeared in 1958 on the west coast and over the next 5 years acquired dozens of smaller publishers and distributors. By the early 60s they were the dominant distributor and would remain so until the present. Nearly all of their publications can be identified by the Parliament News ( PN ) logo on the front cover. From the earliest days these were the so-called "adult book store" magazines. More daring than their newstand competitors they were printed in much smaller numbers - thousands vs. hundreds of thousands - which accounts for their relative scarcity. The page counts of these magazines were generally much smaller than newstand magazines since they had very few, if any advertisements - usually for their own products. Cover prices on these mags also tend to be higher (usually at least double) than for contemporary newstand issues. From the late 50s until about 1964 these books are classified as "Classic Cheesecake" and a separate listing can be found under that heading. Beginning about 1965, with the advent of the "Jaybird" series and similar books (including many nudist magazines) the photography became much more explicit and went from mainly single girl photo sets to lots of couples, groups & orgies and tons of psuedo-scientific nonsense such as many of the titles by rival Pendulum Publishing. Most of this was simulated soft-core sex until about 1968 when they began publishing the real thing in earnest.
Although Parliament News is by far the largest distributor and accounts for the major portion of the magazines in this section, there are numerous other publishers and these have been listed for each individual magazine when known. Some of these include, Marquis, Briarwood, and Golden State News.