Skip to main content

We've had babies

Look, dear, we've had babies!
(Trade at top, mass market at bottom)
I'm delighted to say that the paperback versions of The Universe Inside You have arrived and now are on sale. I thought it might be a good opportunity to consider the different book publishing formats and how they are to be approached in an ebook world.

It can be quite confusing as there are two distinct types of paperback - trade and mass market. In this instance, Universe was first published as a trade paperback. This is a somewhat larger format and typically has a slightly more robust cover, often with opening flaps on the edges.

Universe has now come out as a mass market paperback. This is smaller (more so than is obvious in the picture - the mass market paperback is noticeably smaller when handled for real) and cheaper - in this case £8.99 as against £12.99 full price.

The trade paperback is an alternative to a hardback, which is usually priced higher still. There seem to be two reasons for producing these more expensive versions. Hardbacks/trade paperbacks are, for some reason, more likely to be reviewed, and they make more imposing presents. Sales of these, particularly hardbacks, seem to be holding up in the face of ebook competition.

The mass market (wishful thinking as a term in many cases) paperback is, of course, the cheap and cheerful format. But as it's usually undercut by the ebook, should there be one, it has been suffering sales in comparison with its big brothers.

With ebooks produced in parallel with the paper version being pretty much the norm, will publishers keep going with the two/three tier approach? I really don't know. Traditionally if there was only one tier it would either be just a hardback (because it didn't sell enough to go into paperback) or just a mass market paperback (as it wasn't the sort of book that would treasured/given as a gift). Now, maybe, we will see more trade paperback only issues as a kind of comprise to accompany the ebook. Having said that, the production costs of hardbacks aren't hugely greater than paperbacks (far less than the price point suggests) so we may see more hardback only pbooks at trade paperback prices.

As for the ebooks, the format decision isn't about size or cover, but which platforms to go for. Kindle seems a no-brainer. The best of my ebook publishers, Icon, also goes for iTunes, Nook and Kobo. But is it worth also going for the apparently drooping Sony ereader? Should publishers bother with any other formats? It's a tricky one. But what remains sure is that books will not settle into a single format that is set in stone. They will continue to mutate to match our reading habits.

There have been triumphant reports from conservatives suggesting that ebook sales are tapering off. This is rubbish. But equally silly are the predictions we have been seeing for about 10 years of the demise of the printed book. There may be tweaking, but both formats have a long way to go yet.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope