Mass market paperbacks will all but vanish from the publishing scene in a few weeks

[NNolan]

This subject reminded me of my favorite downtown bookstore when I was in high school. They had walls of shelves of paperbacks with no front covers, sold for a fraction of the cover price. It's probably illegal to sell paperbacks with no front covers now, but 50 years ago this book store did it. Without a front cover you really had to have an intriguing title for me to dig that book out of a big stack of books to see if it was something I wanted to read. Alas, that book store is long gone, but I still remember it, and their rock bottom prices, fondly.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by NNolan

This subject reminded me of my favorite downtown bookstore when I was in high school. They had walls of shelves of paperbacks with no front covers, sold for a fraction of the cover price. It's probably illegal to sell paperbacks with no front covers now, but 50 years ago this book store did it. Without a front cover you really had to have an intriguing title for me to dig that book out of a big stack of books to see if it was something I wanted to read. Alas, that book store is long gone, but I still remember it, and their rock bottom prices, fondly.

It was and still is illegal. The covers were sent to the publisher for credit or refund, and the books are supposed to be destroyed.
Apache

[Chinook1544]

This discussion reminds me of something my father once told me "Getting old was fun, being old is a pain". In youth we bought the mass market books and loved them. As several above mentioned, I always had a tattered paperback in my back pocket. But now I absolutely have to use an ereader just to increase the font size so I can see the print.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by NNolan

This subject reminded me of my favorite downtown bookstore when I was in high school. They had walls of shelves of paperbacks with no front covers, sold for a fraction of the cover price. It's probably illegal to sell paperbacks with no front covers now, but 50 years ago this book store did it. Without a front cover you really had to have an intriguing title for me to dig that book out of a big stack of books to see if it was something I wanted to read. Alas, that book store is long gone, but I still remember it, and their rock bottom prices, fondly.

It was and is fraud. Someone was refunded the cost of those books. That's why the covers were missing.

Report this if you ever see it.

[NNolan]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It was and is fraud. Someone was refunded the cost of those books. That's why the covers were missing.

Report this if you ever see it.

This was over 50 years ago and the store has been gone for at least 40 years. I've never seen another store like it. It's only been in the last 20 years or so that I've even seen a paperback with the warning inside about no covers, so it wasn't something I knew about as a teenager. I will still remember it fondly as it stretched the book budget in my babysitting money.

[Apache]

It seems to me that every paperback book I read had that warning in the front of the book. Of course, most people don't read the legal information in the front of books.
Apache

[John F]

Originally Posted by Apache

It seems to me that every paperback book I read had that warning in the front of the book. Of course, most people don't read the legal information in the front of books.
Apache

I recall seeing it also. I just checked an old paperback, The Hobbit published 1975, and it didn't have the warning.

The second one I looked at had the warning.

They both still had their covers.

[JSWolf]

I've seen that cover warning on some eBooks that didn't have a proper cover.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've seen that cover warning on some eBooks that didn't have a proper cover.

Then obviously those were illegal sales.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've seen that cover warning on some eBooks that didn't have a proper cover.

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Then obviously those were illegal sales.

Please put a warning on those messages! Cleaning coffee out of your nose and off the keyboard is no fun.

[Waylander]

On a serious note, how will this affect genre authors who are primarily published in mmpb? Most sci-fi/fantasy authors, for example, are published in mmpb, even if they're lucky enough to get a hb edition first. Will all these authors now just have their books published in tpb? And if so, will those whose books were just recently published in mmpb be transitioned to tpb, or just be sold via ebook? This is less of an issue in Britain as 1) the distribution system is different, and 2) fiction paperbacks, literary and genre, are released in what are called B-format books, 12cm x 19cm. Mmpb haven't really been a thing here, even in genre fiction, for 15-20 years.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Please put a warning on those messages! Cleaning coffee out of your nose and off the keyboard is no fun.

[thescifilady]

I picked a couple of paper books off my shelves to have a look at that warning. I tried to pick wildly different books, and always chose a different publisher. Most of them had a warning. Of the handful I checked, Pocket Books Fiction, Gollancz, and Pan Macmillan Australia notably don't carry a warning about disfiguring the cover prior to sale/trade. Here's the list:

Cabal by Clive Barker (Pocket Books Fiction, 1995 ed.) - no warning.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (Gollancz, 2009 ed.) - no warning.

Gallipoli Sniper by John Hamilton (Pan Macmillan Australia, 2008 ed.) - no warning.

The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke (Grafton, 1987 ed.) - warning.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (Faber and Faber, 2013 ed.) - warning.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (Fleet, 2019 ed.) - warning.

... Slow day at the office today.

[Quoth]

May be related to any policy on unsold retail stock by a particular publisher. Some may not give any rebate and thus covers are not returned. A returned cover is a proof it wasn't sold. Shops here used to cut the masthead of newspapers that offered a rebate on unsold copies.

[NNolan]

I just checked the only 3 paperbacks I still have after multiple moves in the last 50 years, Elizabeth Gaskell's ATLAN books, published in the late 60s and reprinted in the early 70s, and there is no warning on any of the front pages. Since that downtown bookstore was open in the 70s it's entirely possible that the warning wasn't a thing back then, or the book store only carried the coverless paperbacks that didn't have the warning.