Note to Readers – Every now and then, I will re-post a blog entry that has withstood the test of time. Whether you missed it the first time ‘round or read it years ago, I feel it’s worth sharing again. I chose Paperbacks—The Hybrid Book? from August 10, 2014 after discovering that I had to adjust my old bookshelves to hold my new paperbacks since book dimensions have changed. That’s not all that has changed in the publishing world so it’s worth looking at the history of paperbacks… you might be surprised. (By the way, I never did buy an eReader.)

When I’m home, I prefer to read hardcover books but when I travel, I choose paperbacks. The reason is obvious: portability. Eventually, I will give in and get an eReader because it trumps paperbacks for portability, except that paperbacks don’t require battery power. With digital books, I will miss the sensory pleasures one gets with the touch or smell of paper that paperbacks offer. Even with an eReader, I’ll probably still carry a paperback when I travel.

I hadn’t given much thought to the health of the paperback industry until a couple of months ago when I saw an obituary for a man named Oscar Dystel. No, I hadn’t heard of him either, but I learned he was the publisher who “saved the paperback” in the mid-1950s.

When Dystel arrived at Bantam Books, founded in 1945 to maximize profits from new paperback production advances, the company had gorged on success but overextended itself and was on the brink of bankruptcy. As Bantam’s new president, Dystel reduced inventory while expanding publication to classics, school and children’s books. He also had a keen sense for what the public would respond to: appealing covers on the outside and riveting stories on
the inside. In just a few short years, he turned around Bantam Books, setting new standards that other publishers followed.

Another major paperback publisher, Penguin, celebrated its history in 2009 with a commemorative retrospective book, The Book of Penguin. It opens, “This is a book about the most advanced form of entertainment ever. You can pause it at any time. Rewind and replay it if you miss a bit … It’ll fit in your pocket. It’s interactive … It’s pretty cheap. It’s completely free to share. And it lasts a lifetime. This is a book about books.”

In the five years after that self-celebration, eBooks swept the market. In 2011, Amazon reported that eBooks outsold paperbacks and hardcovers combined. The upward trajectory of eBooks continued, at the expense of paperbacks. The 2013 BookStats report noted that eBook sales grew 45 percent since 2011, capturing 20% of the trade market. More ominously, Publishers Weekly said trade paperbacks saw a sales decline of 8.6 percent and total mass-market paperback sales fell by 20.5 percent between 2011 and 2012.

Before you mourn the death of paperbacks, consider this: sales reports don’t account for secondhand sales. There are no secondhand eBooks but secondhand paperbacks are wildly popular. Also, there are some genres that don’t sell well as eBooks but flourish in paperback form; popular narrative nonfiction and the pop-science books, for example.

The strongest hope for the continuation of paperbacks may lay with the intense market interest in indie books, a key force behind the growing popularity of indie bookstores. Readers are searchers. The physicality and staff experience offered by those stores offer “discoverability” – an element missing from digital books and online booksellers. Paperbacks make discoverability more affordable.

The role of books in all their forms is evolving. Fortunately, there’s a place for all of them.

Update: Sales of consumer e-books plunged 17% in the U.K. in 2016, according to the Publishers Association. Sales of physical books and journals went up by 7% over the same period, while children’s books surged 16%.

According to the Pew Research Center, 65% of Americans reported reading a printed book in the past year, compared to only 28% who read an e-book. Sales of e-readers declined by more than 40% between 2011 and 2016.

Note to Readers – From time to time, I will re-post a past entry that has withstood the test of time. Whether you missed it the first time ‘round or read it years ago, I feel it’s worth sharing again. I chose Pardon My Gender from September 2015 because newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau showed that female authors helped American bookstores increases sales for the first time since 2007. The top three U.S. bestselling authors were Harper Lee, E.L. James and Paula Hawkins. Listen up publishers!

Curran Bell, Acton Bell and Ellis Bell may not be names you recognize but what if I were to say Charlotte, Anne and Emily Brontë? In the 1800s, the famous Brontë sisters had to don male names in order to get their writing published after England’s poet laureate Robert Southey responded to 20-year-old Charlotte’s selection of poetry with, “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life.” Other noted female authors of the same period who disguised their gender in order to get published include George Sand (Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin) and George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans.)

A century later, Nell Harper Lee dropped her first name for the more androgynous Harper Lee. Nora Roberts, a bestselling author of romance novels under her real name, became a bestselling author of detective fiction using the pseudonym J.D. Robb.

Perhaps the best known contemporary female author to neuter her name is J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame. Her UK publisher, Bloomsbury, felt that replacing her first name (Joanne) with initials would make her book more appealing to boys. Without a middle name of her own, she used her grandmother’s, Kathleen. “They could have called me Enid Snodgrass,” Rowling told The Telegraph in an interview. “I just wanted it [the book] published.”

As long as women have written, they have had to contend with bias in the publishing industry. While some are hopeful that the growing number of female authors with successful books will open doors for more women, statistics suggest that traditional publishers still view women primarily as writers and readers of romance novels.

Two 2011 studies prove the point. They showed that The New York Review of Books reviewed 71 female authors, compared to 293 male authors; The New York Times reviewed 273 women and 520 men. Only Crown published a similar number of male and female authors; the others clearly favored men.

Women authors are not the only ones battling discrimination in the publishing world. Minorities are also largely underserved, much to the loss of booklovers. But women are not a minority, which is why I highlight this sorry aspect of the publishing world.

The emergence of self-publishing is resulting in some hugely successful female writers (see Footnotes) but traditional publishers need to step up to the plate. It makes good business sense. Car dealers, real estate marketers and political parties have awakened to the potential women offer, not only as consumers but as producers. It’s time for the white male bastions of the publishing world to make way for diversity. Let it begin with women authors.

Curran Bell, Acton Bell and Ellis Bell may not be names you recognize but what if I were to say Charlotte, Anne and Emily Brontë? In the 1800s, the famous Brontë sisters had to don male names in order to get their writing published after England’s poet laureate Robert Southey responded to 20-year-old Charlotte’s selection of poetry with, “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life.” Other noted female authors of the same period who disguised their gender in order to get published include George Sand (Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin) and George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans.)

A century later, Nell Harper Lee dropped her first name for the more androgynous Harper Lee. Nora Roberts, a bestselling author of romance novels under her real name, became a bestselling author of detective fiction using the pseudonym J.D. Robb.

Perhaps the best known contemporary female author to neuter her name is J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame. Her UK publisher, Bloomsbury, felt that replacing her first name (Joanne) with initials would make her book more appealing to boys. Without a middle name of her own, she used her grandmother’s, Kathleen. “They could have called me Enid Snodgrass,” Rowling told The Telegraph in an interview. “I just wanted it [the book] published.”

As long as women have written, they have had to contend with bias in the publishing industry. While some are hopeful that the growing number of female authors with successful books will open doors for more women, statistics suggest that traditional publishers still view women primarily as writers and readers of romance novels.

Two 2011 studies prove the point. They showed that The New York Review of Books reviewed 71 female authors, compared to 293 male authors; The New York Times reviewed 273 women and 520 men. Only Crown published a similar number of male and female authors; the others clearly favored men.

Women authors are not the only ones battling discrimination in the publishing world. Minorities are also largely underserved, much to the loss of booklovers. But women are not a minority, which is why I highlight this sorry aspect of the publishing world.

The emergence of self-publishing is resulting in some hugely successful female writers (see Footnotes) but traditional publishers need to step up to the plate. It makes good business sense. Car dealers, real estate marketers and political parties have awakened to the potential women offer, not only as consumers but as producers. It’s time for the white male bastions of the publishing world to make way for diversity. Let it begin with women authors.

You know you’re in trouble when Stephen Colbert gives you the finger on his TV show. On June 4th, Colbert gave not one but two fingers to Amazon. Yes, that Amazon.

Now, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Amazon for a long time. I love it when I can order something from the comfort of home, assured that the item will be very quickly delivered to my door and I’ll probably have paid less than from anywhere else. I hate it when I have to admit that my efficiency and frugality are also laziness and greed; that by ordering from Amazon, I am denying smaller businesses and local merchants much-needed income. I hate it even more when I remember that Amazon’s business model takes a huge hunk of profit out of the hands of authors and threatens the existence of local independent bookstores.

The ingenuity and entrepreneurial genius of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, deserves admiration. But I am aghast at Amazon’s unnecessary ruthlessness in its ugly battle against Hachette Book Group, the publisher (under various publishing names) of such authors as James Patterson, Scott Turow, Malcom Gladwell, Mitch Albom, Jane Hamilton, J.D. Salinger, J.K. Rowling (under her pen name Robert Galbraith) and hundreds of other authors.

Hachette had the courage to stand up to the huge wholesale discount Amazon demands on the titles it sells. In trying to negotiate better terms with Amazon, Hachette wanted “to protect the value of our authors’ books and our own work in editing, distributing and marketing them.”

Declaring war on Hachette’s attempt, Amazon took steps to discourage book lovers from buying Hachette books on the Amazon site: they eliminated presales options; removed their customary Amazon discount; are telling potential buyers that shipment could take weeks; and removed some titles from the Amazon site or are suggesting less expensive alternative titles from other publishers.

This is not the first time Amazon has heavy-handedly threatened publishers. In 2010, they removed all buy buttons from the listing for MacMillan titles during a negotiation over e-book pricing. As far back as the 1990s, Amazon routinely punished imprints that didn’t accept its business arrangements. Until now, they’ve gotten away with it as the media largely ignored the story while customers like you and I increasingly purchased things through Amazon.

As big as Hachette is, Amazon is way bigger in its dominance of the bookselling industry. Hachette is the fourth-largest publisher by market share but Amazon is, reportedly, responsible for at least a third of all U.S. book sales and somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of the burgeoning eBook market. The battle may seem to favor Amazon … but I wonder. Most of us root for the underdog when we sense an unfair fight. We tend to favor the working person (in this case, authors) over the faceless corporate behemoth (Amazon). And we demand honesty in the companies we do business with. Amazon isn’t being honest with us about book availability.

Whether moral sensibility or greed guides us, there’s no point in saving money if the seller purposely holds the product back or attempts to misdirect us, especially when it’s so easy to shop elsewhere at a marginally higher cost. Brand allegiance is a myth and if people grow tired of Amazon’s inability to provide a certain level of service, we’ll shop elsewhere.

If Amazon doesn’t start playing more fairly, they may find more people giving them the finger.