3.4 Major Book Formats

The durability of hardcover books makes them attractive to both authors and book purchasers. However, the competitive economics of today’s publishing industry means that some books never get issued in hardcover. Because hardcover books incur more expenses to produce and almost always cost more than their paperback equivalents, publishers tend to reserve the format for books that they expect will sell well.

Based on projected sales, publishers must decide the size of a print run to order for a new hardcover book. A book’s print run refers to all the copies made in one setup of the printing apparatus. A failed book may only have one, while a successful book may have 50 or more printings. Figuring out how many copies of a book to print can prove quite challenging, as publishers must essentially guess how well a book will sell. No standards to determine a size for a print run exist. The U.K. edition of the first Harry Potter book had an initial print run of only 500 copies; the U.S. print run of the seventh and final book in the series consisted of a record-breaking 12 million. When an initial print run sells out, the book either gets reprinted (these copies constitute the book’s second printing) or goes out of print. The contemporary publishing industry will often issue a first-run hardcover printing, followed by subsequent paperback editions.

Paperback

Inexpensive paper-bound books have existed for centuries in formats like the chapbook, the British penny dreadful, and the American dime novel. However, the hardcover book, whether as an ancient codex or its contemporary equivalent, stood as the dominant format in the book world for thousands of years. The introduction of a new format in the 1930s, the paperback, challenged this dynamic. The so-called paperback revolution began during the Great Depression when publishers marketed paperbacks as inexpensive alternatives to hardcover editions. Penguin Books, Ltd., the first majorly successful paperback publishing company, kept prices low by ordering large print runs and selling books in nontraditional retailers, such as Woolworth’s drugstores. Penguin also broke the traditional paperback mold by avoiding pulp fiction entertainment novels and instead printed inexpensive books focused on intellectually stimulating subjects and themes. Pocket Books editor Donald Porter Geddes spelled out this new approach to bookselling in 1944: “The best books apparently have the greatest appeal to the greatest number of people…the larger American public need no longer suffer from the delusion that it is intellectually inferior, or, from a literary point of view, lacking in any aspect in good taste, judgment, and appetite (Ogle, 1960).” By 1960, when paperback books first outsold hardcovers, history proved the claims of these early paperback innovators right.

While paperback publishing first focused exclusively on reprinting hardcover books, paperback originals, books that debuted as a paperback edition, emerged in the 1950s. Paperback originals also helped remove the stigma from the paperback format. In 2000, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Interpreter of Maladies became the first (and still only) paperback original to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Today’s publishers divide paperback books into two broad categories: mass-market paperbacks and trade paperbacks. Mass-market paperbacks consist of small, inexpensive editions that sometimes get issued after the release of a hardcover edition, although many genre novels only get released in mass-market paperback editions. Trade paperbacks resemble their hardcover contemporaries and offer increased size and quality. If the trade paperback follows a hardcover release, the paperback will replicate the dimensions of the hardcover and will use the same pagination and page layout as the hardcover edition.

Traditionally, hardcover books were often perceived as more prestigious than paperbacks. However, this distinction has become less pronounced in recent years, as readers increasingly value convenience and affordability. While hardcover editions may still be preferred for certain genres like literary fiction or coffee-table books, the popularity of paperbacks and e-books has significantly increased. In fact, some publishers of literary fiction have reported high return rates for hardcover books, indicating a shift in reader preferences. As a response, certain publishers opted to release books with uncertain sales potential as trade paperbacks, bypassing the hardcover format entirely. “Getting somebody to spend $22 on a book by an author who they’ve never heard of is hard, but getting them to spend $13.95 on a paperback is much easier,” Random House’s Jane von Mehren told The New York Times in 2006 (Wyatt, 2006). Some publishers expressed concern that book reviewers don’t take trade paperback editions as seriously.

E-Books

Physical books, regardless of the format, have faced stiffer competition from digital formats. According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP), physical formats dominated the book market in 2009, with trade paperbacks and hardcovers accounting for the majority of sales. However, the rise of digital formats has dramatically reshaped the industry. Today, e-books and audiobooks have become major segments, capturing a significant portion of the market. While the exact percentages can vary, it’s safe to say that the distribution of book sales is now much more diverse than it was then. While paperback books disrupted the traditional concept of books by making them cheaper and more portable, e-books, also known as electronic or digital books, have transformed the world’s first mass communication tool by allowing users to read books on the screen of an electronic device, whether a cell phone, personal computer, or dedicated e-book reader.

E-books differ from their print equivalents in many significant ways. For one, the physical production cost gets eliminated, which means that e-books generally cost less than traditional books. The cost to store or transport e-books also disappears. Because an e-book’s publisher doesn’t need to order a set print run, a text issued as an e-book doesn’t ever have to go out of print. E-books also appeal to readers who want instant gratification. Instead of having to travel to a brick-and-mortar bookstore or wait for a delivery, a reader can download an e-book almost instantly.

Early e-books mostly consisted of technical manuals or digitized versions of works in the public domain. As the Internet took off and as electronic devices became increasingly mobile, book publishers began to issue digital editions of their works. In the first decade of the 21st century, various companies began issuing software and hardware platforms for electronic books, each competing for dominance in this emerging market.

Although e-books make up only a small percentage of total book sales, that number has grown. Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, the follow up to his massively popular novel The Da Vinci Code, sold more copies as a Kindle e-book than as a hardcover in the first few days after its September 2009 release. However, e-book successes have led to a threat that faces many kinds of digital content: online piracy. Only a few days after its initial release, Brown’s novel had been illegally downloaded more than 100,000 times. Some authors and publishers express concern that Internet users expect free content and will find a way around spending money on e-books. American novelist Sherman Alexie echoed some of these anxieties, “With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of ownership—of artistic ownership—goes away (Frisch, 2010).” Other prominent authors have reacted to the e-book in various ways. 

E-books have a unique concern: the possibility of digital decay. It turns out that digital formats tend to decay much faster than their physical counterparts (Bollacker, 2010). The swift turnover of digital devices illustrates another concern; the possibility exists that a book bought on an iPad in 2020 will work on an equivalent device in 2035 or even 2025.

While e-books still made up a relatively small portion of the overall book market in that year, their sales increased dramatically. Since then, the popularity of e-books has continued to rise, driven by factors such as the proliferation of e-readers, smartphones, and tablets, as well as the convenience and accessibility of digital content.

Today, e-books account for a substantial portion of book sales, with estimates ranging from 25% to 35% of the total market. The introduction of new e-reader models with features like full-color screens, embedded web links, and video capabilities has further enhanced the reading experience and contributed to the growth of the e-book market.

As technology continues to advance, it’s likely that the e-book market will continue to evolve, potentially reshaping the way people consume and interact with books in the future.