One way in which I have been dealing with the state of the world at present is by allowing myself to collect pretty, or at least interesting, editions of books I already know I love. It is just a little distracting kindness for myself: These are not new books, and therefore do not add to my endless TBR pile. They are not fancy books. They are cheap books. At most they are used $15 hardcovers of, for example, a Joan Vinge book with a Leo and Diane Dillon cover.
But mostly, they’re mass markets, those virtually square little tomes that used to be the backbone of SFF. My beloved local SFF store, Parallel Worlds, had tables and tables of mass markets out on the sidewalk the other weekend for a buck apiece. A dollar! I restrained myself and only bought books I do not already own. I do not need to buy a whole new set of Jo Clayton’s Duel of Sorcery books to give to some as yet unknown person. (But sometimes you just want to take old favorites home with you.)
There are many charms to the books that are commonly referred to as mass market paperbacks (they are also known by the somewhat less wordy term “rack size”). They are small. If you have reasonably sized pockets, apparently they fit in pockets. (They fit in the pockets of my chore coat, and that’s it.) They stack neatly. They often have incredible cover art. They smell different. Sometimes the page edges are that bright, bright yellow.
And they’re cheap. Or at least cheaper.
I was thinking about mass markets because of that sidewalk sale, and all the things I wanted to take home but didn’t. But it seems like a lot of people have had them on the brain. Jenny Hamilton recently posted a photo of some of hers while she was reshelving. Chuck Wendig, in response to a Nat Cassidy post, said, “We lost something as a nation when we lost the mass market paperback format.”
From there, things went in all directions. Charles Stross got detailed about when he’d seen mass market sales decline, and mentioned that “mass market” technically refers to a distribution channel, not a book trim size. This is a fair thing to point out, especially since there are no industry standards when it comes to book sizes. Cassidy griped about the “WEIRD NEW TALL PSEUDO MASS MARKET EDITIONS,” a gripe that I share. I don’t generally hate books, but those are just wrong.
I went poking around Bluesky and found all sorts of mass market posts, just from the last month. A lot of them said some variation of “Bring back the mass market paperback,” which is sort of funny, because it’s not really gone. Not entirely. Not yet. But it is fading.
Earlier this year, Readerlink announced it would stop distributing mass market paperbacks by the end of 2025. Readerlink describes itself as “the largest full-service distributor of hardcover, trade and paperback books to non-trade channel booksellers in North America,” which is to say, Readerlink is a main channel through which books get to all those non-bookstore places we used to find mass markets, like grocery stores. According to Publishers Weekly, “Readerlink’s customers, which include Walmart, Kroger, Hudson News, and other mass merchandisers, account for as much as 60–70% of mass market paperback sales in the U.S.”
That’s a lot of mass markets no longer going into the world.
In a follow-up piece, Publishers Weekly wrote, “Consensus across the six publishers that spoke with PW said that most new and established authors who had been published in mass market will now simply get moved over to trade paperback.”
But trades aren’t the same. And not just because mass markets are cheaper, though that is certainly part of the picture—both in terms of why readers want them and why publishers might not want to print them. Why would they want to sell a book for $9 when they could sell it for $18? Once upon a time, maybe, those little books were selling in larger quantities, so it all mathed out in the end. And once upon a time, maybe, publishing was a slightly less money-driven industry. People joke about the era of the three-martini lunch, and publishing being a “gentleman’s” business, and how different it used to be. But there is, I think, some truth in those jokes.
So many books that I love first appeared as mass markets—like all those Jo Clayton novels I keep buying new-to-me copies of. I don’t think I’m alone in that, as a reader, I grew up almost entirely on mass markets. If the books I was reading had ever come in other formats, I never saw them—with rare exceptions like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the giant omnibus edition in faux leather) or The Mists of Avalon (which I always assumed was just too big to fit in the smaller size). Hardcovers? Presumably they existed, but not to me. Those books were invisible until they arrived in the small, portable, affordable format.
It is often said that ebooks ate the mass market paperback market, which is probably true for some readers (I would love to see how that played out within different genres). Some things are still printed in mass market; some things still sell in mass market (Publishers Weekly says that 2024’s bestselling mass markets were both George Orwell anniversary editions. Make of that what you will). But it seems telling that, for example, paperback editions of the Star Wars High Republic books come only in trade size. (The Rise of Skywalker novelization, though, that you can get in the small size.) The things that used to feel like the norms simply aren’t anymore. (I haven’t yet read Dan Sinykin’s recent book Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature, but the more I think about this, the closer it inches to the top of my read-this-next stack. The first two sections are about the mass market, the next about trade.)
Reluctantly, I get it. Sort of. It’s about money; it’s about production costs and volume; it’s about “the market”; and it’s about distribution (when’s the last time you saw a spinner rack at a grocery store?). And equally reluctantly, I have to admit that a big part of my love for this format is nostalgia. I haven’t bought a new mass market since I read the Song of Ice and Fire books almost 15 years ago.
But I buy used ones all the time. I buy the ones I had and have since waylaid; I buy the ones with the very best covers. (Am I going to read the book with the giant space otter in the sky? Possibly not. But it was still worth a dollar.) I have a running list of mass markets I want to find: the Wizard of Earthsea with the cover depicting a half-man, half-hawk wearing bright teal tights; the Lord of the Rings series with the Barbara Remington cover art; Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy with the Michael Whelan art. Anything with art by the Dillons. All the Jo Claytons I don’t have and/or never read. And so many more.
Part of the reason I love these books so much is just that I remember being in my teens, and being able to buy four or five books with one birthday giftcard. It was all discovery, all new things; it was the way I stepped out from under the shadow of my mother’s (excellent) reading taste and finding my own. I was buying all those books at Waldenbooks, a mall store that doesn’t exist anymore, so in a way, it makes a bitter kind of sense that the books themselves are less and less common, too.
Still: The price difference is no joke. Nor is the fact that you can’t just buy bestselling novels with your groceries the way you used to be able to do. I miss these books because I’m nostalgic, but I also think that nostalgia isn’t just about the books—it’s about a different way of books coming into the world. A more accessible way; a less specialized way. It’s not really about the size of the book, is it? It’s about what it meant, and means, to each reader.
They definitely fit in the cargo pockets of Army BDUs (camo pants).
I find mass markets more interesting as objects than most modern trade paperbacks. Their compactness is, however, a mixed blessing; easy for storage but Lonesome Dove (among others) proved unreadable in the format due to the minuscule font. The new series Doctor Who Target novelisations are still printed in this size and I think that the Horus Heresy series have maintained an edition since 2006 with dogged consistency
Forgot to mention that the Penguin Essentials line is also still A-format
can confirm, in the 90s i could fit a mass market neatly into the pocket of my jnco jeans. there are sooooo many books i fell in love with in that format that i still own, it will truly be a shame if it goes entirely away.
I have that edition of The Snow Queen! Also, I went to a lot of trouble to track down a hard cover with the Dillon cover. No offense to Whelan but in that specific case I want Dillon.
I have prints of Whelan’s art for The Snow Queen and The Summer Queen hanging on my bedroom wall. (The latter now rather faded, alas — admittedly it’s been more than 30 years since I bought it.)
I almost settled for the new Tor Trade edition… but three tries later, it failed to show up, so I went off to Alibris for the edition I really wanted.
MMPs were sold to retailers like magazines, and could be returned if unsold (or at least the cover removed and returned). That gave the sellers an incentive which made them ubiquitous. And the low price encouraged buying, which encouraged reading. While purists scoffed at the lo-brow entertainment they offered, usually in some sort of pulpy genre fiction, we are a less literate society today without MMPs. And now the used book trade, which relied heavily on MMPs is drying up as well.
One day, while I was substitute teaching in a sixth or seventh grade class, one of the students was reading a pretty spicy romance MMB aloud*. MMBs fit so much better in crowded bookbags than trade paperbacks or hardcovers.
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* I did not tell her it was inappropriate or trash; I just asked her to read silently. When I mentioned this to the srudent’s English teacher, she said [ paraphrased] “thank God she’s reading something.”
I suppose ebooks fill the mmpb niche but A: I don’t get the same endorphin rush, and B: readers do not own any DRMed books they can access. They’ve just rented them.
Also, as long as the pages don’t fall out, LANCER, a MMPB I bought in 1980 has the same text now as it had in 1980, whereas ebooks can be rewritten on the fly.
Thankfully, there are some/many non DRM ebooks out there and I download epubs with abandon onto my phone to read on the go.
For years I’d buy favorite authors in hardback and then buy the mass market as my handy re-read edition. They were so much easier to carry around. I always hated trade paperback. They have the size problem of the hardback without the durability. I’ve always assumed ebooks would finally replace mass market as the standard convenient/portable edition but so far that hasn’t seemed to happen.
I work in a new/used bookstore, and while we get the occasional mass market size new from the publishers, it’s nothing in comparison to how many old ones we get. Mysteries, military fiction, romance, sci-fi, it was all that size and you can SEE when it shifted to these taller, larger books. JD Robb is the one I always think of because we’ve had customers come in and talk about how their collections don’t line up anymore with these larger books they’re publishing. It’s not really a big deal or anything, I’ve just heard a lot of support for them going back to smaller sizes.
I vastly prefer the mmpb format because I can fit more books on my finite shelf space that way….
Took me years to find Jo Clayton’s Diadem to the Stars Books #7
Then months to find a copy without a cigarette burn through a fifth of the book
Unfortunately Jo Clayton’s Diadem to the Stars Books #1 to #4 did not age well
But I still have 3x duplicate sets of the Skeen’s Leap trilogy in Massmarket so I can lend out to unsuspecting victims
I have a bookcase filled with old paperbacks back home, and now that I’m no longer there I kind of miss them. So, every now and then, I pass by my favorite used bookshop and browse for a while, until I find a volume or two that catch my eye and soothe my soul.
I did like the mass-market paperbacks that tucked into the back pocket of my jeans. (Looking at you, DAW Books!).
And the big economy for publishers with trade paperback over mass market editions is a lack of re-formatting. Trades are exactly the same pagination as their hardcover edition, unlike mass markets, which require different pagination to keep the font to a legible size.
Conspiracy theory: publishers are dumping mass markets in order to force us to buy ebooks, which are otherwise a market failure. Discuss.
Nope. The impetus came from bookstores, which can make more profit from trade paperbacks since they have a higher price point and don’t have to be sent back after a certain length of time. Bookstores are major customers for print books, so their preferences have a lot of influence on publishers’ choices. And the MMPB market was largely driven by sales through grocery stores and the like, similar to magazine distribution, and those avenues have dried up, leaving just the bookstores.
I’ve seen it argued that the decline in MMPB profits was also partly caused by ebooks taking over much of the market niche that MMPBs had traditionally filled, the reverse of what you’re proposing, though it sounds like that trend may not have lasted.
Mass market paperbacks were a huge part of my early reading. I flew through children’s books and essentially skipped young adult books at a fairly young age, using my lunch money and hard earned allowance to buy mass markets off of the beloved wire racks of the neighborhood drug store.
By the time I started junior high, I was biking out to the bookstore at the edge of town that, like so many book stores in the seventies, only sold mass markets (with hardcovers only being available at department stores or through book clubs, which were ubiquitous at the time). The whole self-help book boom was started with mass markets, which most mom’s at the time had a half-dozen of laying around the nightstand and coffee table. In many ways mass markets were to hardcovers as made-for-elevision-movies were to theatrical films of the era, more affordable and popular and, if less prestigious (or outright trashier), perhaps more closely aligned to popular tastes.
Even the bookstore I worked at in college sold mostly mass markets with hardcovers being limited to new bestsellers and a few non-fiction titles like cookbooks and the Jane Fonda workout book. In fact the store I worked at was part of small Michigan chain owned by a rackjobber that had made a small fortune by stocking the racks of grocery and drug stores and opened its own bookstores to take advantage of the feeding frenzy.
I can distinctly remember when the trade format began to take over publishing and The New York Times even did an article about the trend around 1985-6, citing the format as being more popular with the yuppie market that was steering so much of consumer culture back then (see compact discs). The change happened very quickly, coinciding with the rise of Borders and Barnes and Noble. By the early nineties the company I worked for had decided to open a new chain of similarly styled “classy” bookstores specializing in trades and hardcovers and closed down all of its mass market stores. Right about that time I bought my last new mass market, a collection of Peter Taylor’s short stories.
I’ve always been ambivalent about trades which seem neither fish nor fowl to me and given the option, would just as soon spend the extra money for the hardcover. I still buy a fair amount of mass markets from used bookstores and ebay, mostly vintage horror anthologies. John King Books in Detroit has a wonderful section devoted to mass market TV tie-in novels from the sixties and seventies (“Dark Shadows,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E,” “The Invaders”) which I joyfully pick up just to face-out on my bookshelves.
To this day, whenever I think of bookstores I think of a small store with a low ceiling and long rows off mass markets. Despite the (steadily decelerating) BookTok boom, I find myself thinking that the publishing industry, along with consumers (they’re really not readers anymore) are actually killing off books with the sad, creepy obsession over successive multiple editions featuring “bonus material,” sprayed edges, hardcovers with sprayed edges (“SO PRETTY!!”) and I can’t help but remember how record companies similarly bilked the hoarder crowd with endless reissues of CDs featuring bonus tracks or endlessly improved remasterings during the nineties and fear that fatigue is inevitable.
I had not thought of the trend in these terms but suddenly I am reminded of the collectable comics craze of the early 1990s. Variant covers and enough debt to buy a space shuttle.
I scarcely noticed the difference, since my usual form of consumption came from hardcover books borrowed from the local library. But then the Barbara Remington LOTR books were mentioned above and I was hit by a nostalgia ambush. I remember reading them for the first time, only because I could afford to buy those copies with my not-so-hard-earned babysitting money (and which unfortunately disappeared sometime later after I left home to go to college). Now I do not buy new books because my hands do not cooperate to hold them and my eyes need a less minuscule type size.
I recently bought a trade paperback SF novel that less than half-way through, clearly should not have been more than $10.99. Definitely makes me even more leery of that particular publisher (I know they’re just following the trend, and some of my favorite authors are published by them, but now I’m just not willing the chance my money on an unknown)(and by ‘unknown‘, I mean ‘I don’t normally buy from that publisher because they don’t carry books I generally like apart from my faves‘).
And we also detest the weird skinny overly tall “mass market” books that don’t fit on any shelf.
I rather miss being able to buy new MMPBs, but I can get used ones from a local used bookstore. The trade sized are not the same. I cannot curl up with a good book on a chair, loveseat, or couch like I can with an MMBP. And no, an e-reader is not the same. Sure I can adjust the font to my liking, but the dark gray on light gray of the screen gets old after an hour or so. I like the feel of the paper, the slow yellowing and softening of the pages after a re-read. Hardcovers and Trades just don’t have that cozy feel and the plastic/metal of an e-reader is worse for that. I miss that coziness on the Nook, or any other e-reader.
Now I buy my books like I buy my groceries: electronically.
Man, how I miss the Mass paperbacks and spinner racks and mall bookstores – Waldens, B. Dalton, Bookland, are the ones where I grew up. But before I had driver’s license and/or some wheels. I was limited to the Pharmacy and Grocery store for my paperbacks and novels. A few months ago I bought a Stephen King novel as the CVS Pharmacy, and just the act of doing that made me so happy.
BTW-a mass market of a serial type novel, like say a Tarzan, a Conan,a Western, an apocalyptic, or military adventure, fit nice and snug in the back pocket of a pair of broken-in jeans.
I’m also very nostalgic especially about books and comic books. Not only do I miss the mass market paperbacks but I miss the shelf in the bookshop that used to be called Men’s Adventure. I do get why that’s not only a problematic term as well as a bogus one -Men’s Adventure wasn’t a real genre, it was a selection of all genres what most publishers believed regular blue-collar men read. And yes blue-collar men did read when I was a kid. I used to be fascinated by the paperbacks that my best friend’s step-dad had on his shelf – his dad worked on the state roads. And every ones grandfather used to read Louis Lamour or Zane Grey westerns.
Now I’m one of those old dude who’s, for better or worse, the last of a dying breed and I’m starting to feel so out of place in a bookstore. I’m not knocking what anyone loves to read, in fact I’ll champion any genre fiction because I’m so passionate about what I read that I would never deny anyone else that joy. That said, romance, romantasy, YA, is just not my jam and when I go into a Barnes and Noble or most any books store – if there any others bookstores- I see table displays, overflowing with books that my daughter or her friends would love to read and the SFF section is even smaller than my personal library and half of what they have looks like YA or Romantasy which, I guess, is what is selling.
However, I do see some hope. There’s some indie publishers -mostly financed by crowd funding – that are doing some old school paperbacks with painted covers and mass paperback sizes. Brackenbury Books is doing what we’re calling New Edge Sword and Sorcery – S&S stories with more modern sensibilities. They’re awesome. Not only are the covers great, they even spray colored edges with vintage colors. Brakenbury has even done a double, where you can flip the book over for a second story with its own cover.
I ran across a book called Sledge vs. The Labyrinth by Nick Horvath, kinda of a modern crime noir thriller. While its not the exact size of the old mass markets, its not as big as a trade either and the cover is awesome. Not just because of the painted illustration but its faux distressed.
So I guess they are out there in the wild, almost extinct, but will these animals every come back strong? I hope so but I’m not holding my breath either. Because I don’t think companies in the entertainment business truly know what consumers really want. They’re focused on what the algorithms, social media, and mass media, say consumers want.
You should consider yourself fortunate if you have a used/2nd hand bookstore to buy from.
I live in the UK and they are sadly a thing of the past, unless you live in London or some other large city of course, then you may find the odd one or two.
Sadly these days I have to buy from Amazon with gougers prices, which is no fun at all.
There’s very little more pleasurable in life than browsing a tatty old book store.
Pretty much the same here in the states. Although in the last year or so, we have had a couple independant bookstores open in my local area. And that’s after decades with no bookstores., new or otherwise.
Hey just wanting to do a quick, somewhat off topic update for Molly Templeton’s “What to Watch and Read” for August 14 (can’t leave a comment on that). CTV.ca does have Killjoys for streaming — all five seasons.
I was shocked a year or so ago to realize that major science fiction and fantasy publishers such as DAW Books, for example, had almost entirely stopping publishing mass market books in favor of trade paperbacks. Trade’s always been my least favorite format. Mass market books are perfect for carrying around, taking on trips, and cramming into small spaces. My understanding is that the rise of the small, cheap paperback played a large role in increasing people’s access to books, promoting an increase in reading and sharing stories. I’m disturbed that people would stop publishing them.
Apparently e-books have largely taken over that niche. It’s even more convenient to carry hundreds of books on your phone than to carry one in a pocket. Personally, I’ve become quite fond of reading books on my phone, since the positioning of the lighting fixtures in my apartment isn’t great for walking around while reading, but with an e-book, I can walk around as much as I want.
YES! They fit in cargo pockets and in my fanny pack. I actually made sure to bring a MMPB on vacation so I could easily carry a book while waiting in lines at Disney, and I jam one into my fanny pack when I’m at concerts XD
Trades don’t fit!!
I had that Wizard of Earthsea (and the others) edition! I definitely grew up on mass markets (thank god for my wallet at the time given how much I read!).
“Anything with art by the Dillons” remains one of my strongest book-buying criteria lol! I’m also always sorely tempted by Jody Lee covers, the artist who did all the old Mercedes Lackey books. Anyway, I agree, I would love MMPs to make a comeback! Not just for portability, but because they’re so much easier to fit and stack in bookshelves!!! Manga still has this beautiful shelvability down pat, I wish all my bookcases looked like the manga one.
I love my old Mass Market books. I have a fairly large collection, but especially the ones with Michael Whelan covers or just the immensely strange depictions. I also wonder if there is something about having your initial bookstore experiences in a Waldenbooks that makes you more partial to the Mass Market paperback size. I know that is the place that got me hooked. Bought my first set of LOTR and a bunch of Dragon Lance books as well as my favorite Micahel Whelan print bookmark.
I always enjoyed the potato-chip smell you got off the paper if the book had been printed recently enough. “New Book Smell.” It should be in an air freshener.
I miss them, too.
I used to buy mm cozy mysteries by the half-dozen, almost every month.
I absolutely do not miss mass-market paperbacks. HIgh-acid paper that turns yellow and brittle. Spines that crack. Glue so cheap the binding falls apart. Small type.
Just no!
Not all MMPBs were like that. In later decades, they mostly phased out acid-free paper, and used better glue. And the font size depends on the word count and page count. Small type is often necessary to keep the price down, since more pages means a higher price point.
Mass markets were a godsend to me, as a teenager. With minimum wage being around $3, they were what I could afford. My mass market copy of Benchley’s Jaws, purchased back in the 1970s, still has a place on my bookshelf, along with my very battered but loved copy of Hugo’s Les Miserables. Decades later, I now buy a mixture of hardbacks, trade, and mass market, mostly driven by the author or how appealing the book appears is to me.
Mass Market Paperbacks are my GO TO for all Sy-fy and Fantasy reads; Asimov, Hyperion, LOTR’s, Hobb, Sanderson, The Lies of Locke Lamora, etc. It is the compact comfortable FEEL of them in the hand while reading that I enjoy (I hate all that floppy nonsense from trade paperbacks). I’ve honestly not read a single Adrien Tchaikovsky book yet (despite being extremely interested) because it doesn’t seem like MMP’s exist for his work. I haven’t read the “final” book in the Stormlight Archive because I’m waiting for the MMP to complete my collection. If these truly go the way of the dodo I will likely end up buying less new books. Do others feel this way?
Nope. To me, the important parts are the words and ideas, not the medium in which they’re delivered. I’ll take books in whatever format I can get them — paperback, hardcover, e-book, audiobook, papyrus scrolls, whatever. I see no point in depriving myself of the content based on the medium. That’s like refusing a Christmas present because you don’t like the way it was wrapped.