The slow death of the mass market paperback

I grew up reading mass market paperbacks. Those are the pocket-sized books, normally 4.25 inches by 6.75 inches. They are my preferred format, and always have been. Sure, I read hardcovers (recently finished Racing the Light by Robert Crais—excellent novel—and I’m currently reading The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin, which I’m loving) and trade paperbacks and even ebooks. Trade paperbacks normally have a standard trim size of either 5 inches by 8 inches, or 6 inches by 9 inches. Same for hardcovers. With my own novels, the ebooks far outsell the print editions, but there’s a reason I made so many of my books available in the mass market size—I like them, and I wanted my own mass market editions on my bookshelves, thank you very much. Mass markets are cool.

These days, the mass market is an endangered species. I dropped by a local Barnes & Noble to check out the current state of the market. In the general fiction area, there were zero mass markets. I later found a rolling cart with a small selection: three of Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series, a few classics like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and a couple of Michael Crichton novels. All great books, but slim pickings. It’s not that bookstores don’t stock them. No, it’s that publishers are moving away from them.

My initial guess is that they prefer trade paperbacks for two reasons. First, they’re more expensive so they have a much higher profit margin, and second, they can’t be stripped for returns. The return system is monumentally stupid. Publishers started the program during the Great Depression so stores would give new books a chance. If they didn’t sell, the bookseller could return them for full credit. With trade paperbacks and hardcovers, the entire book is sent back, but with mass markets, they tear off the cover and only the cover is returned. Retailers aren’t supposed to sell “stripped” books because the publisher was not paid for them, and the author didn’t receive a royalty.

They should have stopped the returns program as soon as the Great Depression ended.

But by then it was standard for the industry, so they left it alone.

Back at the bookstore, it was time to check out the other sections. As I wandered through the non-fiction areas, I saw one (count it) mass market paperback: Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. It looked sad and lonely surrounded by all the trades and hardcovers, but it stood in proud defiance of its larger relatives.

The horror section was well-stocked. I was especially pleased to see some Shirley Jackson books. As for mass markets, there were only a few. A smattering of V.C. Andrews, a Bentley Little, a Dan Simmons, a few Stephen King, a cool version of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and a couple of Halloween movie tie-ins (which, if they follow in the footsteps of the original Halloween tie-ins, will likely be worth money in a few years). There were some tall rack paperbacks—the so-called “comfortable reading size” which are simply taller mass markets—of some King books, Dean Koontz, Joe Hill, and others. And tons of trades by Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, Paul Tremblay, Clive Barker, etc.

Fantasy and science fiction fared a little better. Jim Butcher and Frank Herbert’s Dune series were well-represented in the tall rack size, and for regular mass markets, there were Patricia Briggs, Lois McMaster Bujold, Larry Correia, Eric Flint, and others. But the overwhelming majority were trades.

In the media tie-in section, there were plenty of Star Wars, some Star Trek and Doctor Who mass markets. Still, the trades filled the shelves with Alien, Firefly, and others.

Mystery probably fared the best because so many cozy mysteries are still published in mass market. Some of them are published in those awful square books—quarter of an inch taller a mass market, but a half-inch wider, which makes them look terrible on a bookshelf, and they don’t fit your hands. Yes, I know that’s still technically a rectangle, but I think of them as square books, so deal with it.

Romance had two sections. First, I saw a line of shelves exclusively devoted to trade paperbacks and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Then I found the mass markets in a different part of the store and breathed a sigh of relief. Even there, those awful square books keep popping up. I feel for the people who read Susan Mallery, Robyn Carr, and others because their shelves will look weird with some books sticking out farther than others. Definitely not for the OCD crowd.

There was a rolling cart of Westerns, but it was primarily Ralph Compton and William W. Johnstone. I think they were setting up a new shelf, so the lone copy of Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage should be joined by a row of Louis L’Amour, but that’s about it.

Look, I have nothing against the other formats, but I will always be a mass market guy primarily because they remind me of being young and full of wonder. They’re light, compact, and cool. I just loved that something in such a small package carried whole new worlds to discover. Not that the others didn’t, but mass markets just felt right—more accessible somehow. I know some readers prefer hardcovers because of the prestige. Perception counts for a lot. It must be good; it’s in hardcover. Some folks feel that trade paperbacks are better than their smaller cousins, because maybe they have that extra pinch of fairy dust so people think they’re “real literature,” whatever that is. Still others prefer ebooks because they can keep an entire library of thousands of books on their phone or Kindle. And for people of a certain age, it’s nice to be able to make the font size larger. What are your preferred formats, and why? Let me know in the comments below.