Without a doubt, publishers prefer hardcovers because they’re more profitable, often selling for “twice the price of a paperback” without twice the production cost, Jones said.Īnd as Mental Floss notes, hardcover releases followed up by paperback releases give publishers two big marketing opportunities for any given title-double the chances that book will end up in your hands. Bookstores may prefer them because they’re larger, more easily visible on bookshelves. Readers may prefer hardcovers because they’re more durable than paperbacks. Citing data from Nielsen BookScan, Jones said hardcovers compose roughly 20% of the printed fiction market. Today, publishers still put out hardcovers first for the simple fact that they sell, as Philip Jones, editor of publishing-industry magazine The Bookseller, explained in an interview with The Guardian.
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Their (typically) rectangular, solid shapes behave nicely on bookshelves! And until World War II, they were really the only trim size available. Hardcovers exist for their durability and relative convenience. “There is no way to casually prop open a scroll in one hand while sipping from a glass of wine held in the other.”
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“It takes two hands to simultaneously unfurl a bookroll at one end and roll it up at the other,” Houston writes in The Book. While these scrolls and bookrolls became increasingly durable, usability problems remained. Why they exist: Prior to the hardcover, ancient book formats vacillated between various forms of parchment and papyrus scrolls. Many books from indie presses likewise debut in paperback. Where you won’t see them: A lot of genre fiction (romance, science fiction, fantasy) dispenses with the hardcover format. Books with lower expected circulation, meanwhile, often get stocked in cheaper paperback form. Hardcovers-especially those with reinforced library binding-hold up better over time for multiple borrowers, particularly with popular titles, according to Leah Oswald, a reference librarian with the Austin Public Library. Likely, you’ll see them in your local library, too. Where you see them: Most new releases arrive in hardback first, followed by a paperback release around a year later. When you buy them new, they may come with removable dust jackets to protect their covers. What they are: Hardcovers, sometimes referred to as “trade cloth” books, are hardbound books with sewn spines. Regardless, any time I refer to “trim size,” I’m merely referring to the actual size of the book. The dimensions, Houston writes, were (super scientifically) copied from Secretary of State Herbert Hoover’s personal letter paper. How they arrived at such a definition is telling.
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That pair of granularly named committees is responsible, for example, for our standard letter sizes (8 x 10 ½ inches and 8 ½ x 11 inches).