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Your paperback books are going away
6 months ago
If it was your custom to wait a year or so after a new book was published in hardcover to buy the inevitable paperback edition, Jeffrey Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal has some bad news for you. The five major publishing houses (Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) are phasing out trade paperback releases of new nonfiction hardcovers, and on top of that, by the end of 2025, mass market (spinner rack size) paperbacks will no longer be published or distributed at all. (Mass market paperbacks aren't profitable, 'cause only older people still buy them.)
What's this all about? Well, publishers, dedicated to cutting costs, make twice as much money selling a new hardcover as a new paperback, and trade paperback sales have been declining (by over 40% over the last five years, according to Trachtenberg) as e-books, and especially audiobooks, have become increasingly popular.
For now, it isn't fiction paperbacks that're on the endangered list: paperback sales of thrillers, romance, fantasy, and romantasy are brisk, and publishers are putting their time and resources into promoting those genres, not to mention the tireless promotion of their rosters of big name literary authors (and their latest guaranteed bestsellers). It's hardcover books in less popular categories -- history, criticism, political analysis, art, science, philosophy -- that publishers are no longer interested in releasing as paperbacks. The profit margins are slimmer, retailers are ordering books in smaller quantities, and let's not forget that Amazon will often sell a new hardcover for the price of a paperback.
So who's gonna be hurt by the gradual disappearance of the trade paperback? Readers will have fewer choices, of course, but it's the authors -- little-known authors, established authors with small but loyal audiences -- who'll feel the brunt of this business decision. There'll be no "second life" for books with a delayed paperback release; a book will have to sell well in its first five months in hardcover, and the author will have to promote the hell out of it, online and in person, as best they can (because that's no longer the publisher's job). If it doesn't sell, it disappears.
You may be thinking, Well I don't read any of that stuff anyway; it's no skin off my nose. There's nothing I can say to that. There'll be a brave new literary landscape of fewer options, and an exponential increase in more of the same. Good time to be a writer, ennit?
What's this all about? Well, publishers, dedicated to cutting costs, make twice as much money selling a new hardcover as a new paperback, and trade paperback sales have been declining (by over 40% over the last five years, according to Trachtenberg) as e-books, and especially audiobooks, have become increasingly popular.
For now, it isn't fiction paperbacks that're on the endangered list: paperback sales of thrillers, romance, fantasy, and romantasy are brisk, and publishers are putting their time and resources into promoting those genres, not to mention the tireless promotion of their rosters of big name literary authors (and their latest guaranteed bestsellers). It's hardcover books in less popular categories -- history, criticism, political analysis, art, science, philosophy -- that publishers are no longer interested in releasing as paperbacks. The profit margins are slimmer, retailers are ordering books in smaller quantities, and let's not forget that Amazon will often sell a new hardcover for the price of a paperback.
So who's gonna be hurt by the gradual disappearance of the trade paperback? Readers will have fewer choices, of course, but it's the authors -- little-known authors, established authors with small but loyal audiences -- who'll feel the brunt of this business decision. There'll be no "second life" for books with a delayed paperback release; a book will have to sell well in its first five months in hardcover, and the author will have to promote the hell out of it, online and in person, as best they can (because that's no longer the publisher's job). If it doesn't sell, it disappears.
You may be thinking, Well I don't read any of that stuff anyway; it's no skin off my nose. There's nothing I can say to that. There'll be a brave new literary landscape of fewer options, and an exponential increase in more of the same. Good time to be a writer, ennit?
Some books work best in hardcover: cookbooks, artbooks, photography collections. And those Library of America uniform editions are both classy and conveniently sized. But most hardcover books...
I'm a buyer at a used bookstore, and I have to tell people who're bringing in their dozens of signed hardcover mysteries, out-of-date science books, and memoirs by long-forgotten politicians that their collections are worth little or nothing. Not a fun part of the job.
Their future value (or lack thereof) at a used-book store is beside the point -- the paperback versions will have even less, so it's hardly an argument in favor of continuing to print them in paperback form as well.
Goddamn budget cuts
Seriously, that's how I learned about a lot of stuff I didn't already know.
Just was hoping they could help me indirectly support some artists I like, is all.