26
votes
Waiting for a book in paperback? Good luck. Publishers increasingly give nonfiction authors one shot at print stardom, ditching paperbacks as priorities shift.
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- Title
- Waiting for the Paperback? Good Luck.
- Authors
- Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg
- Word count
- 114 words
As an outsider, I was going to ask an ignorant question, "why don't they just all release to paperback instead of hardcover->paperback?"
Then I continued reading and saw:
At this point, can loss-leaders just be made illegal? I know I as a consumer will suffer, but they just feel like the push that begins the descent down a slippery slope. (disclosure, I don't know how Amazon's book pricing model works).
I think the bigger factor is eBooks. The purpose of the paperback was to be a less durable, cheaper, and more convenient alternative to a traditional hardcover. eBooks deliver on those last two points much more effectively than paperbacks, so it's no surprise the part of the market that prioritizes them moved over.
It's a similar story in lots of other physical media. DVD and CD sales have collapsed because they are less convenient than streaming, but 4k blu-ray and vinyl sales maintain their niche because the people buying them have priorities other than convenience.
DVD sales haven't actually collapsed and remain oddly competitive with newer formats. I couldn't find the actual source and am leaving the house, but this is where I heard that.
Physical media as a whole dropped below $1b sales in the US last year, down from a peak of $16b before streaming started taking off. DVD is still the biggest segment of the global market, in part because it's the cheapest viable option in parts of the world without reliable high speed internet access.
Look at the 4k Blu-Ray slice of that pie, it has been growing consistently for years despite the format nearing a decade old. As more and more people ditch DVD for streaming, the premium format is taking over whats left of the physical media market. It was not that long ago that the combined market share of Blu-Ray and 4k Blu-Ray were still well below DVD
I think it’s kinda funny, paperbacks always felt more sturdy to me than hardcovers. That’s probably not true for very high quality ones, but your generic major publisher hardcover seems to have rather flimsy bindings that can just (partially) fall off the cover, making the book wobbly. They also just seem to age worse, a beat up paperback feels “loved” to me while a beat up hardcover feels “damaged”. Also dust jackets my beloathed. The main advantage they have to me is that paperbacks often require more force to hold open than hardcovers.
I feel like you passed over the actual reason the article mentioned
It's like movies. They come out first at theaters, then later in DVDs or streaming. Everyone has higher margins for theaters, or hardcover in this case. So you want your hardcore audience to buy the hardcovers. Then, you get the rest of the demand curve via paperbacks. So they don't all release in paperbacks, because everyone would make less money.
What's happening is that the audience of physical book-buyers is getting increasingly niche and hardcore. So it would make no sense to prioritize paperbacks over hardcovers.
Furthermore, the niche of paperbacks - being cheap and light - is being eaten away by ebooks, which are lighter and the same price.
I was kinda bummed until I read your comment and remembered I hadn't purchased a physical book in well over a decade.
It's me. I'm responsible. I am that guy who used to mostly buy paperbacks and now only buys ebooks....
It doesn't have to be all or nothing(thought I appreciate your introspection), you could buy used books (I know the author does not receive money from this, but it's still supporting the art form).
You could splurge occasionally and buy a physical book from an author you want to show support for, or otherwise donate to the author so that they continue to make content.
I have a few prized hard cover books, but I have digital copies of them as well. I like that I can and do take my library everywhere (on my phone...). I don't really avail myself of printed media, but I appreciate that it exists... and am sad that we're post peak printed media.
I think paperbacks still have their place and the pendulum will eventually swing in their favor. For me, and probably for a large portion of people who don't churn through books but still read some, the experience of an ebook will never compare to a physical book and a hardcover just isn't as convenient to carry around.
Perhaps, and if it is so then their sales will rebound and all will be well.
If not, well, it’s not like paperbacks have a god-given right to exist.
Seems pretty optimistic given that the newer generations are going to be even less inclined to care about the physical experience of a paperback, and ebook readers look better than paperback in many ways.
The only thing that sometimes makes me wish I had a paperback is the sluggishness of the ebook processor/screen, and that sort of thing is only getting better.
I think we are seeing some pushback to respect the physical media form in addition to the digital media form.
For various reasons, from studies on what screens and lights do to our eyes and minds, to some people just having a preference, people are choosing to read physical books. Barnes and Noble, in the USA, has been able to grow and maintain its marketshare of the physical book environment and even plans to open new physical locations this year.
Coincidentally, while researching information for this post, I came across something I did not know, that Amazon had physical book stores?
I mean, I saw that part of the article too, but I think the article is trying to make multiple points and show multiple perspectives.
The part of the article you quoted is that hardcovers earn all parties more money than paperbacks, but does that mean that hardcovers are a necessary part of the process at all for all parties to make profit?
The Amazon part stood out for me more, because I think it's human nature to say, "why would I pay more for a paperback than I would for a hardcover?" even if you don't need or want a hardcover. Just like when a new book is cheaper than a used book on Amazon, the human bias towards wanting the new one "just because" is very very high and manipulated to contrive an artificial situation in which we are arguing about business practices instead of whether this situation should exist.
Again, maybe I don't understand from a business perspective why you wouldn't just have an ecosystem of paperback + ebook, but you allude to this by stating that the market for physical books is dwindling so you have to go to the cash cow hardcover. I guess I'm obsessed with a chicken and egg situation lol.
It's because of the dynamics of the customer base. Let's say there's broadly two groups of buyers: group A, and group B. Group A is like the people who subscribe to Brandon Sanderson's patreon; they're hardcore fans of an author. They're price inelastic - that is, when you move the price up, the units sold doesn't decrease that much, and vice versa.
Group B is the kind of people who are casually browsing a bookstore. They're price elastic - if you move the price up, a lot of them stop buying, and if you move the price down, a lot of them start buying.
What's happened is that group B has gotten smaller and smaller, because there's a lot of competition for these people. They may choose to watch tiktok, or youtube, or netflix, or whatever instead.
So you index to group A - group A is price inelastic, so you'll make more money by offering high margin, more premium goods.
Hardcovers are a group A thing, paperbacks are a group B thing. But group B is not only ever smaller, but they often prefer to buy ebooks - even better, you have 100% margin on that. So it may not even be worth the effort of printing and marketing paperbacks to group B.
You see this in a lot of niche areas - Blurays are a good example. Or vinyls.
On Amazon, it doesn't really make any sense if you dig deeper. Why does Amazon have a competitive advantage discounting hardcovers? There's nothing about Amazon's business models that allows them to discount hardcovers more than Barnes and Nobles. Amazon's size lets them price things low in general, but that applies to everything, not just hardcovers.
Amazon couldn’t care less the hardness of the books you buy. If they were going to discount something to their advantage, it would be the kindle ebook versions.
There's no grand conspiracy here. It's simply a market dynamic we've seen happen to physical goods in music, movies, and more.
Appreciate the explanation, gives me something to think about.
Man, I wish. I cant believe its accepted practice to sell things at a loss.
At the very least it should fall under anti-competitive practices.
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The trend towards fewer paperbacks is very disappointing. There are a lot of nonfiction books that I don't care enough for to buy as a hardcover, but a $10 paperback is perfectly fine and more comfortable.
Besides this, the sales numbers presented were fascinating. A highly reviewed book given fairly prominent position generated, what, $500,000 in all? After the costs to produce the book, the profits have to be very slim relative to the amount of work and luck it took to get that book there.
I don’t think it’s surprising, though. Paperbacks lost their niche to ebooks. Hardcovers have their place because they’re a displayable, collectible object. Paperbacks are intended to be more practical - lighter, and cheaper. But you can’t get lighter than bytes, and ebooks are usually priced the same.
Is what it is.
We'll see how people feel in the long term about losing their rights to preserving media. Movies are a mess right now with a million different competing platforms. It's becoming incredibly hard to watch movies you want to because the system is so fractured. Music is doing alright, there's not much exclusivety among services and most people aren't going to miss a song or two. Games are in a potentially disastrous place, the only reason it's not been an issue for the most part of because Gaben is a unicorn billionaire but he won't live forever.
Books have long been a thing people held onto and cherished. Maybe with the absolute glut of new releases available now, reading will become "cheap experiences" like has happened to TV shows. If that's the case, then I don't think society will push back about losing their rights to what they bought as they'll rarely reread anything anyway. Hard to say though, books are a more involved and intimate media to consume than TV and music.
Paperback binding can be actively preferable to hardcover binding for many non-fiction books. Paper covers are thinner, lighter, and more flexible than hard covers, which is handy for guides that you carry around and refer back to frequently.
Honest question: do people actually like hard cover better than paper back? If they were the same price, which would you buy? I have long switched to audiobooks, but I did just buy a physical book to help with my French learning. It was paper back because I didn’t have a choice. But if I did, I honestly think I would have chosen paper back instead of hard cover at the same price. Paper is more convenient, lighter, easier. Do other people here agree with me, or do you agree with the publishers that hard cover is better ignoring the price difference?
Hardcovers are MUCH more durable. This is very noticeable when I look at examples on my own shelves from when I was younger (i.e., the books I've re-read the most often) -- a lot of the paperbacks are falling apart while the hardcovers remain in pretty good condition. I've never been the type to baby my books, so the added durability does matter.
I often pick which edition of a book to buy based on which cover art I prefer, but all else being equal, I'd pick the hardcover for this reason. Even though I do hate dust jackets, which are a hardcover-specific thing, and I have teeny hands that are well-suited to the size of a paperback.
equally important for durability is the quality of the materials and construction. i'd much rather a properly sewn softcover on thick, acid-free paper than a shoddy, perfect-bound hardcover. many hardcovers today are quite low quality. hardcover will not be worse than a co-published softcover edition, but it still rankles quite a bit—books are mostly not made to be treasured artifacts anymore. i recently got a conference proceedings from the 60s and a poetry collection from a not-so-famous poet from the 50s. both are not so 'fancy' as these things go, but they far and away blow away the vast majority of books printed in the last few decades
I'm not old enough to own many books published so long ago, so I'm just reflecting on the books in my own personal library, where modern hardcovers have held up well to wear and tear in a way modern paperbacks have not. It doesn't really matter if a paperback from the 60s would've been higher quality than my 21st century hardcovers when there are no 60s paperback versions of the books I'm buying. I've generally been satisfied with the physical quality of my modern hardcovers so far.
It depends on a few factors for me:
There’s two more things that will dissuade me from a specific format but require holding the book in my hands: If it’s a paperback and the spine is really stiff (so that the book requires force to stop from closing), I’ll go for hardcover or ebook. If it’s a hardcover but the binding is just shoddily glued on and will probably literally fall out if the book gets abused a bit… I might still buy it but I won’t be happy about it.
Hardcovers are better for display. If I buy a book these days, it’s because it’s “special” in some way. Maybe it’s from an author I admire. Or a book I particularly liked in the past.
For practical purposes, I’d rather just get an ebook. And having gone through several rounds of selling pounds upon pounds of physical books for pennies at used book stores, I just really have to weigh the physical space and weight of any physical book I buy these days.
Add one to the hard cover contingent. I have large and sweaty hands, and as a result, the weight of a hardback is vastly outweighed by the fact it won't literally dissolve from my use. Even high quality softcovers end up falling apart if the book is over a couple hundred pages or I return to it.
I just realised that’s a possible thing! I’ve only had the disposable income and the inkling to buy physical books for maybe the last decade, and I always bought the paperback because it’s more convenient (more flexible covers means I can bend them into all kinds of ergonomic shapes to hold one or two handed as needed)
But also I had been wanting to buy them for ages, so I valued/treasured them and wanted them long term, so I always laminated the covers as soon as they arrived, before they went on my shelf or got read.
I also have sweaty hands so I can imagine dissolving them too, especially with how abusive I can be about curling and bending them to fit in my hands. Maybe laminating them could help you too?
Edit: to be clear, when I say “laminating” I don’t mean running it through a hot sheet laminator. I mean using flexible clear plastic cover that has one sticky side, and when I was growing up we used to wrap my school writing books in this stuff. Lots of them were opaque and covered in colours and shapes and images, but there was always the clear transparent type too.
I’ll dig up a link if I remember
At least in my case, the spine has always been the first thing to fail on paperbacks (likely because I also wasn't exactly babying them to protect it).
Ah, I haven’t had any of my book long enough for the spine to fail. But also I chose paperback because of the pliant spine — one reason I don’t favour hardcover is because I can’t push them more open/flat on a table.
Oh well, if these ones fail on me that way, I can at least be happy that they had a good run!
For books that need good resistance to the elements (such as heavily-used cookbooks), I prefer hardcover. Depending on the binding's design, hardcover books also tend to sit open more easily than paperback, which is handy for reference books that are used that way.
For books that are carried around (such as field guides), I prefer paperback to hardcover. However, what I like even more is a plastic cover because that's thin, flexible, and lightweight like paper, but also much more durable.
All that being said, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the binding of the non-fiction books I buy. They almost always have only one option that perfectly suits the way the book is meant to be used and how often it's meant to be used. I have a range of books in hardcover, paperback, plastic, and even spiral binding, and I wouldn't swap out any of them (with the singular exception of my most heavily used cookbook, which was self-published as a relatively low-quality paperback that doesn't resist liquids and refuses to sit open; the best workaround I've found is to photocopy the best recipes, laminate then, and put them in a three-ring binder).