Paperback Writer

For many writers, getting a book in paperback is a measure of success.  As writers we think of those books so common that you can find them in grocery stores and drug stores and airports.  Books by Stephen King are everywhere.

We tend to think of hardcover books as overpriced and out of reach for hoi polloi.  Besides, who has room to store a bunch of hardback books?  They take up valuable shelf space.  If a book doesn’t come out in paperback we think of it as a failure.

Publishers tend to look at it the other way around.  Books are a luxury item.  As much as I shudder to write this, you can live without them.  Publishers know this and that’s why book prices often seem so high.  I’m old enough to remember when a mass-market paperback could be purchased for just over a dollar.

Mass market is almost impossible to hit.  As I sit here waiting for six publishers to get back to me on my Medusa novel, I know that it won’t be mass market.  The trade paperback is the larger format, something like 6-by-9 inches.  That’s perhaps a goal.

There are lots of different kinds of publishing.  Scholars write academic books that almost always come out in hardcover only.  They are priced for the library market—i.e., they are expensive.  The readership fiction writers crave is the trade market.

This past week I’ve been reading the Library Journal.  Lots and lots of new books are coming out, some from publishers I’ve never even heard of.  My simple, smart, witty book just can’t seem to get any traction.  I wonder what’s wrong with the world.

To make matters worse, I was reading a book on an unrelated topic, narrating how crackpots in the 1960’s and ’70’s were getting their books published easily.  There was no internet then, and anyone who could write 50,000 words could find a publisher.

Now you can write millions of words (I’m sure I’ve come close—my second novel alone was 232,000 words.  Needless to say, it was never published.) and never get noticed.  Right now I’d even settle for hardcover only.