There was one (often abridged) novel per issue, which appeared in digest size format, which made the books in the series look like digest magazines.
In 1959, after 35 issues, the series was sold to Beacon Books, which changed the format to mass-market (small size) paperback and introduced its own numbering scheme, continuing the series for another 11 issues.
The official publisher of Galaxy novels was World Editions, Inc. for issues 1 through 7 and Galaxy Publishing Corp. for issues 8 through 46.
Issues 1 through 23, 32, 33, and then 35 through 46 were published as Galaxy Science Fiction Novel while issues 24 through 31 and 34 were published as Galaxy Novel.
Fred Pohl, who was editor of Galaxy Publishing Co. from 1960-1969,[1] stated in 1967 that the book series showed a loss of $30,000 (equivalent to $274,132 in 2023) between 1950 and 1958.