It’s worth noting that it’s not “paperbacks” in general but the mass-market paperbacks in particular (despite the headline). The print book market (excluding technical books and textbooks which are a whole separate thing) had effectively three segments: hardcovers, trade paperback and mass-market paperback. The distinction between TP and MMP comes down to price, production quality and to a lesser degree target audience. A trade paperback will have somewhat larger pages, typically the same size as the corresponding hardcover and often printed from the same plates as the hardcover. Mass-market paperbacks were typically smaller, on cheaper paper¹ with smaller margins. Back when there were racks of books in supermarkets and drugstores, these were all MMPs and while bookstores would sell MMPs, they are geared more towards TP and HC sales since the lower price also came with lower margins (hardcovers make the most money for everyone involved and MMPs the least).
Since a large fraction of MMPs sold were genre fiction and a large fraction of that has shifted to ebooks (romance readers were the biggest early adopters of the kindle), along with the decline of book sales outside of bookstore channels, the loss of MMPs isn’t the cultural cataclysm the article claims. Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the trade paperback space has expanded. It’s not uncommon for a new writer’s first book to be released as a trade paperback rather than hardcover (Emily St John Mandel is one notable example of a writer who debuted in TP but had later books released in HC).
⸻
1. It was typically pure wood-pulp paper with high acid content, leading these books to be described as “pulp novels” and since a large fraction of these were genre novels, genre fiction would be referred to as pulp fiction and yes, that’s where the movie gets its name from.
The retail side has alot to do with it. Newsstands and small bookstores are mostly done, and Walmart and other stores are mostly shitty evangelical Jesus books.
Even airport stores are at least half that crap in many cases.
I hypothesize that the kind of reader who wants a physical copy of a book is much happier to get a hardcover. I know I’ve personally lever liked the cheap flimsiness of mass market paperbacks and I don’t read frequently enough for the higher price of a hardcover to matter.
The kind of person who wants the cheapest possible book moved from mass market paperbacks to e-readers.
There was a recent article probably posted here about how UHD 4K Blu-ray sales are increasing over time, somewhat counter to what the average person might assume. I think this analogy works reasonably well. The 4K UHD buyer fits a niche of someone who isn’t satisfied by streaming. They want a keepsake physical piece of media with beautiful box art and the highest quality picture and sound available.
In contrast, the kind of person who would have bought DVDs from the Walmart bin has almost certainly moved to digital. They never cared about the quality of the media, they just wanted a low price with a lot of convenience.
> I know I’ve personally lever liked the cheap flimsiness of mass market paperbacks
I'm in the opposite boat. Growing up, I mostly had paperbacks, and when I encountered hardcover, I just couldn't fathom why someone would pay so much more for something so obviously inferior. They're a bigger pain to hold. Not convenient to put in a backpack. Take up way more space on the bookshelf. Etc.
Strong +1 from me. Hardcovers look nicer but are a PITA to read from, especially when traveling with them. I almost exclusively buy paperback when I opt for dead-tree books simply because the actual reading experience is nicer.
There are different grades or constructions of hardcovers. What you're describing is likely a cheap adhesive casebound. At the other end are the lay-flat hardcovers with sewn signatures and a specially constructed flexible spine. Those are a joy to read.
The high quality hardcovers address none of the complaints.
They are big, and bulky. They don't fit into a backpack. And you can't simply hold them in one hand and read, anywhere you sit. Like a bench in a garden. You need a space dedicated to reading them.
In terms of utility, hardcovers are strictly worse.
I own those, I would describe them as semi-hardcover, with fake leather wrapped around some stiff but still pretty flexible material. The text is also so small as to be difficult to read in all but ideal lighting.
If they're bigger than paperbacks (dimensions and weight), then they're inferior.
Sure - if I have a nice chair to sit on in the evening, with good lighting, and can rest it on something, they're quite nice. But the bulk of my reading is either outside of home (so they need to fit in my bag nicely) in an uncomfortable chair, or while lying down so I need to hold the book up. Weight/size really matters here.
When I was a kid I asked around, and in those days the reasons I was given were:
1. They're durable - less likely to fall apart - and may last generations.
I fit your hypothesis, with one proviso: even for books that I value enough to want a physical hardcover copy (for example, The Lord of the Rings), I also have an ebook version for convenience in reading. But for books that I would have just bought in mass market paperback years ago, yes, I just buy the ebook now.
I see audiobooks as crazy expensive and I don't like how they are locked down. If I paid $20-30 for a Martin Prechtel audio book and get an MP3 or something I could use any way I like it would be one thing but to be locked into Apple or Amazon it is just something I do when I am on the free trial... And Prechtel is one of very few authors I'd prefer it for because his work is so oral.
You mean per month, not per book? Most people I know that listen to audiobooks, do so through services that charge monthly subscription. Netflix for audiobooks, basically.
that's more about a desire not to read, with the (IMO flawed) strategy of multitasking, vs. format. The % of people who have read a book in the past year is abysmal and continues to decline.
One of the most well-read person I know recently revealed to me that the hundreds of books he read over past few years were actually mostly audiobooks - because it turns out that most of his dayjob is physical, low-cognitive-demand kind, and pairs perfectly with audiobooks, basically keeping his brain engaged while his muscles do the repetitive work.
What you're saying is probably correct for some percent of readers, but I'm not sure how big the effect actually is. Personally, I listen to books that I never would have sat down to read in the first place, and the time it takes up isn't competing with reading (doing chores, driving, etc.).
> The kind of person who wants the cheapest possible book moved from mass market paperbacks to e-readers.
When I've looked at ebooks in the past they were usually more expensive than mass market paperback, most often on par with trade paperback. Has this changed?
I was thinking that too, but then the article mentioned at the very end that Canada isn’t experiencing the decline and its mass market paperbacks never ballooned in price. That one fact could prove the entire thesis of the article but wasn’t really explored.
This article asks a bunch of questions without ever bothering to try and answer them. That makes it less than useless; it’s mostly insinuations.
There’s also a lack of historical knowledge. Sure, mass market paperbacks were a new format — but not completely new in 1939. Cheap paperbacks date back to the previous century. The author of this piece would have done well to spend some time with Wikipedia.
For that matter, showing some curiosity about reading habits in general would have helped. Reading wasn’t a new habit: dime novels and pulp magazines were deeply popular in the early 20th century. The jump to mass market paperbacks was not particularly long.
If you did a PCA on the reasons reading has gone down, this would get a very low score.
I can take most young people today, give them access to all the paperbacks in the world (and despite the point of the article, it is very easy to find paperbacks!) and their reading will barely change.
The culture has shifted. Screens are a likely problem. Books - particularly paperbacks - were handy because they could be used to in times of boredom. Waiting at the doctor's office. Commuting to work/school (if you're not driving). In the evening when nothing good was on TV and your computer is turned off. When you didn't want to tie up the phone line talking to friends.
Now there are many more alternatives to fill those spaces.
There comes a time in life when there's "just too much stuff". Whenever that happens, things like e-books and other digital media become more important. And today, unfortunately, books might not be items that have any resale value.
For all the talk of how one doesn't "own" an ebook, I certainly "own" them more than all of the boxes of books I've taken to the Friends of the Library drop off.
Growing up in rural Illinois in the 1980s meant a large number of the books I read came from places other than bookstores.
We did have a Waldenbooks in the mall that was 45 minutes away that we went to 4x/year, but the local library was tiny and I read everything worth reading there probably before I was 10.
The local grocery store had a small section of mass-market paperbacks, and it was my primary place to get books. I know it had lots of Stephen King novels, and I think my first copy of Dune may even have come from there.
(Hardcovers were something that libraries had, not anything normal people would buy, as far as I knew.)
> Beginning in January 2025, the company will stop stocking books regularly, and will instead sell them only during the holiday shopping period, from September through December. During the rest of the year, some books may be sold at Costco stores from time to time, but not in a consistent manner, according to the executives
I’d love to read more books on paper but purely from a utilitarian standpoint, the UK’s race to enormous books (both hardback and paperback) makes it unworkable. Some of the latest books are more like pulpit bibles than something I can toss in a bag for the commute.
In my mind the problem is that those buyers have better places to go than mass market paperbacks.
Someone like you who cares about practicality of “tossing in a bag for a commute” is better served by an e-reader.
Someone who finds hardcovers and big paperbacks too expensive or ungainly, again, better served by e-readers.
Someone who wants the cheapest price possible: e-readers.
That leaves the physical book buyer in much be same niche as a vinyl or 4K UHD Blu-ray buyer. They aren’t buying for convenience and the way the physical object looks and performs matters a lot more than convenience.
In my mind the change happened long before e-Readers came along.
Even in the 1980s there was a surge in expensive "trade paperbacks" that were frequently terribly built. Like you buy one from the store and open it and the binding cracks the very first time.
I have a lot of mass market paperbacks that I mostly bought used in the 1980 and I'd say in the 2000s they were in mostly excellent condition, but at this point in time they are pretty yellowed. My storage conditions are awful, an old farmhouse with a permeable basement, but when I look at books of all kind from the 1960s and 1970s, especially mass market paperbacks that have been rebound, the yellowing is severe.
But even despite them being "cheap", "low quality", etc. I think they were mass produced and more consistent in quality than many more expensive books.
I buy a lot of e-Books but I am putting together a kit for doing tarot readings for other people (most people find the cards are cooperative 30-50% of the time but I have a shtick that gets a response I like almost 100%) and I am starting to be able to work without a book but I still want books and for that I want real books, small books, not something to look at on a phone or tablet.
There's been a trend for some genres to bloat. The usual industry guidance is that a novel shouldn't be more than 100k words, but 120k words is tolerable at a push. But some fantasy and adjacent writers have been producing 200k words, and plenty of readers love them.
200k on a screen is trivial, but in paper form it's a monster.
This article doesn’t mention standard or trade paperbacks. With how much prices have risen on mass market paperbacks a slightly nicer trade paperback is a good value
It’s worth noting that it’s not “paperbacks” in general but the mass-market paperbacks in particular (despite the headline). The print book market (excluding technical books and textbooks which are a whole separate thing) had effectively three segments: hardcovers, trade paperback and mass-market paperback. The distinction between TP and MMP comes down to price, production quality and to a lesser degree target audience. A trade paperback will have somewhat larger pages, typically the same size as the corresponding hardcover and often printed from the same plates as the hardcover. Mass-market paperbacks were typically smaller, on cheaper paper¹ with smaller margins. Back when there were racks of books in supermarkets and drugstores, these were all MMPs and while bookstores would sell MMPs, they are geared more towards TP and HC sales since the lower price also came with lower margins (hardcovers make the most money for everyone involved and MMPs the least).
Since a large fraction of MMPs sold were genre fiction and a large fraction of that has shifted to ebooks (romance readers were the biggest early adopters of the kindle), along with the decline of book sales outside of bookstore channels, the loss of MMPs isn’t the cultural cataclysm the article claims. Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the trade paperback space has expanded. It’s not uncommon for a new writer’s first book to be released as a trade paperback rather than hardcover (Emily St John Mandel is one notable example of a writer who debuted in TP but had later books released in HC).
⸻
1. It was typically pure wood-pulp paper with high acid content, leading these books to be described as “pulp novels” and since a large fraction of these were genre novels, genre fiction would be referred to as pulp fiction and yes, that’s where the movie gets its name from.
The retail side has alot to do with it. Newsstands and small bookstores are mostly done, and Walmart and other stores are mostly shitty evangelical Jesus books.
Even airport stores are at least half that crap in many cases.
Missing from the article is the role of ebooks.
I hypothesize that the kind of reader who wants a physical copy of a book is much happier to get a hardcover. I know I’ve personally lever liked the cheap flimsiness of mass market paperbacks and I don’t read frequently enough for the higher price of a hardcover to matter.
The kind of person who wants the cheapest possible book moved from mass market paperbacks to e-readers.
There was a recent article probably posted here about how UHD 4K Blu-ray sales are increasing over time, somewhat counter to what the average person might assume. I think this analogy works reasonably well. The 4K UHD buyer fits a niche of someone who isn’t satisfied by streaming. They want a keepsake physical piece of media with beautiful box art and the highest quality picture and sound available.
In contrast, the kind of person who would have bought DVDs from the Walmart bin has almost certainly moved to digital. They never cared about the quality of the media, they just wanted a low price with a lot of convenience.
> I know I’ve personally lever liked the cheap flimsiness of mass market paperbacks
I'm in the opposite boat. Growing up, I mostly had paperbacks, and when I encountered hardcover, I just couldn't fathom why someone would pay so much more for something so obviously inferior. They're a bigger pain to hold. Not convenient to put in a backpack. Take up way more space on the bookshelf. Etc.
Strong +1 from me. Hardcovers look nicer but are a PITA to read from, especially when traveling with them. I almost exclusively buy paperback when I opt for dead-tree books simply because the actual reading experience is nicer.
That said, I usually just stick to my kindle.
There are different grades or constructions of hardcovers. What you're describing is likely a cheap adhesive casebound. At the other end are the lay-flat hardcovers with sewn signatures and a specially constructed flexible spine. Those are a joy to read.
The high quality hardcovers address none of the complaints.
They are big, and bulky. They don't fit into a backpack. And you can't simply hold them in one hand and read, anywhere you sit. Like a bench in a garden. You need a space dedicated to reading them.
In terms of utility, hardcovers are strictly worse.
What kind of hardback books are you reading that don’t fit in a backpack?
The only hard bound books I’ve ever purchased that wouldn’t fit in a backpack were intentionally oversized “coffee table” books.
Hardcovers may be made as small as paperbacks, but far more lasting:
https://www.amazon.com/Hobbit-Lord-Rings-Deluxe-Pocket/dp/05...
I own those, I would describe them as semi-hardcover, with fake leather wrapped around some stiff but still pretty flexible material. The text is also so small as to be difficult to read in all but ideal lighting.
If they're bigger than paperbacks (dimensions and weight), then they're inferior.
Sure - if I have a nice chair to sit on in the evening, with good lighting, and can rest it on something, they're quite nice. But the bulk of my reading is either outside of home (so they need to fit in my bag nicely) in an uncomfortable chair, or while lying down so I need to hold the book up. Weight/size really matters here.
When I was a kid I asked around, and in those days the reasons I was given were:
1. They're durable - less likely to fall apart - and may last generations.
2. The font is bigger.
No they are not, who wants to haul around a book when my kindle fits in my pocket? One I can’t read in the dark without an external light?
Hardbacks also hurt more when you fall asleep reading in bed and drop the book on your face.
I fit your hypothesis, with one proviso: even for books that I value enough to want a physical hardcover copy (for example, The Lord of the Rings), I also have an ebook version for convenience in reading. But for books that I would have just bought in mass market paperback years ago, yes, I just buy the ebook now.
Not just eBooks: the growing popularity of audiobooks has presumably had an effect on traditional book sales too.
Audiobook sales continue to grow strongly every year, where as ebooks have been flat or declining in recent years.
I see audiobooks as crazy expensive and I don't like how they are locked down. If I paid $20-30 for a Martin Prechtel audio book and get an MP3 or something I could use any way I like it would be one thing but to be locked into Apple or Amazon it is just something I do when I am on the free trial... And Prechtel is one of very few authors I'd prefer it for because his work is so oral.
Which is why most everyone does a subscription model. ~$15 per book, even if its 800 pages written.
You mean per month, not per book? Most people I know that listen to audiobooks, do so through services that charge monthly subscription. Netflix for audiobooks, basically.
that's more about a desire not to read, with the (IMO flawed) strategy of multitasking, vs. format. The % of people who have read a book in the past year is abysmal and continues to decline.
Multitasking isn't always flawed.
One of the most well-read person I know recently revealed to me that the hundreds of books he read over past few years were actually mostly audiobooks - because it turns out that most of his dayjob is physical, low-cognitive-demand kind, and pairs perfectly with audiobooks, basically keeping his brain engaged while his muscles do the repetitive work.
What you're saying is probably correct for some percent of readers, but I'm not sure how big the effect actually is. Personally, I listen to books that I never would have sat down to read in the first place, and the time it takes up isn't competing with reading (doing chores, driving, etc.).
> The kind of person who wants the cheapest possible book moved from mass market paperbacks to e-readers.
When I've looked at ebooks in the past they were usually more expensive than mass market paperback, most often on par with trade paperback. Has this changed?
I was thinking that too, but then the article mentioned at the very end that Canada isn’t experiencing the decline and its mass market paperbacks never ballooned in price. That one fact could prove the entire thesis of the article but wasn’t really explored.
There is a similar effect with DSLR cameras caused by the widespread availability of mobile phones with cameras included.
The “bottom end” of the camera market is basically gone now, but the high end full frame bodies are still selling.
This article asks a bunch of questions without ever bothering to try and answer them. That makes it less than useless; it’s mostly insinuations.
There’s also a lack of historical knowledge. Sure, mass market paperbacks were a new format — but not completely new in 1939. Cheap paperbacks date back to the previous century. The author of this piece would have done well to spend some time with Wikipedia.
For that matter, showing some curiosity about reading habits in general would have helped. Reading wasn’t a new habit: dime novels and pulp magazines were deeply popular in the early 20th century. The jump to mass market paperbacks was not particularly long.
In fact dime novels weren’t just widely available but were decried as the source of truancy and corruption of youth! Sound familiar?
If you did a PCA on the reasons reading has gone down, this would get a very low score.
I can take most young people today, give them access to all the paperbacks in the world (and despite the point of the article, it is very easy to find paperbacks!) and their reading will barely change.
The culture has shifted. Screens are a likely problem. Books - particularly paperbacks - were handy because they could be used to in times of boredom. Waiting at the doctor's office. Commuting to work/school (if you're not driving). In the evening when nothing good was on TV and your computer is turned off. When you didn't want to tie up the phone line talking to friends.
Now there are many more alternatives to fill those spaces.
There comes a time in life when there's "just too much stuff". Whenever that happens, things like e-books and other digital media become more important. And today, unfortunately, books might not be items that have any resale value.
For all the talk of how one doesn't "own" an ebook, I certainly "own" them more than all of the boxes of books I've taken to the Friends of the Library drop off.
Wild note here that Costco stopped selling books ?!?!
I remember going shopping with my Mom at Costco and the book section was like the highlight!
Growing up in rural Illinois in the 1980s meant a large number of the books I read came from places other than bookstores.
We did have a Waldenbooks in the mall that was 45 minutes away that we went to 4x/year, but the local library was tiny and I read everything worth reading there probably before I was 10.
The local grocery store had a small section of mass-market paperbacks, and it was my primary place to get books. I know it had lots of Stephen King novels, and I think my first copy of Dune may even have come from there.
(Hardcovers were something that libraries had, not anything normal people would buy, as far as I knew.)
Mine usually has a bunch towards Christmas time.
When was this? I don’t recall Costco selling books outside of coloring books and seasonal stuff.
https://archive.is/MBOmm
> Beginning in January 2025, the company will stop stocking books regularly, and will instead sell them only during the holiday shopping period, from September through December. During the rest of the year, some books may be sold at Costco stores from time to time, but not in a consistent manner, according to the executives
I’d love to read more books on paper but purely from a utilitarian standpoint, the UK’s race to enormous books (both hardback and paperback) makes it unworkable. Some of the latest books are more like pulpit bibles than something I can toss in a bag for the commute.
In my mind the problem is that those buyers have better places to go than mass market paperbacks.
Someone like you who cares about practicality of “tossing in a bag for a commute” is better served by an e-reader.
Someone who finds hardcovers and big paperbacks too expensive or ungainly, again, better served by e-readers.
Someone who wants the cheapest price possible: e-readers.
That leaves the physical book buyer in much be same niche as a vinyl or 4K UHD Blu-ray buyer. They aren’t buying for convenience and the way the physical object looks and performs matters a lot more than convenience.
In my mind the change happened long before e-Readers came along.
Even in the 1980s there was a surge in expensive "trade paperbacks" that were frequently terribly built. Like you buy one from the store and open it and the binding cracks the very first time.
I have a lot of mass market paperbacks that I mostly bought used in the 1980 and I'd say in the 2000s they were in mostly excellent condition, but at this point in time they are pretty yellowed. My storage conditions are awful, an old farmhouse with a permeable basement, but when I look at books of all kind from the 1960s and 1970s, especially mass market paperbacks that have been rebound, the yellowing is severe.
But even despite them being "cheap", "low quality", etc. I think they were mass produced and more consistent in quality than many more expensive books.
I buy a lot of e-Books but I am putting together a kit for doing tarot readings for other people (most people find the cards are cooperative 30-50% of the time but I have a shtick that gets a response I like almost 100%) and I am starting to be able to work without a book but I still want books and for that I want real books, small books, not something to look at on a phone or tablet.
There's been a trend for some genres to bloat. The usual industry guidance is that a novel shouldn't be more than 100k words, but 120k words is tolerable at a push. But some fantasy and adjacent writers have been producing 200k words, and plenty of readers love them.
200k on a screen is trivial, but in paper form it's a monster.
This article doesn’t mention standard or trade paperbacks. With how much prices have risen on mass market paperbacks a slightly nicer trade paperback is a good value
I walked into a Barnes&Noble the other day, to check out the sci-fi section.
No mass market paperbacks. Just the trade ones.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/p...
submitted, but no traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46482146
Not sure why a political rag is posted here
WSJ gets posted all the time.