A Stalker’s Notebook – Hardcover Madness

To me, there are two types of bibliophiles in the world: those who buy mass-market paperbacks and those who buy hardcovers (I tend to lump the ‘tweener trade paperbacks in the latter category). I’m more of a mass-market paperback kind of guy; I’m cheap, and I want something portable (I miss the days when pocketbooks could actually fit in your pocket). But from time to time, I eventually succumb to the dark side and buy hardcovers. What’s the appeal of hardcovers?

As far as I could discern, there are two main selling points:

(1) The production values. This could mean the larger size (which makes it more readable) appeals to you. It could be the fact that it actually has a hard cover (nothing like those flimsy paperbacks!) that might stop bullets. Or it might be the ability to open it 180 degrees and not break its spine (it varies from book to book–the spines of my Scholastic Harry Potter hardcovers have been detached from their covers). Collectors tend to value hardcovers, as paperbacks are disposable.

(2) The book tends to get released first (again, there are exceptions, which I’ll tackle later). Dying to get your hands on the latest R.A. Salvatore novel? Or Stephen King? Or Dan Brown? If it’s a major publisher, it’ll most likely get released as a hardcover initially. If you’re a collector, another factor included here is the fact that first editions are released as hardcovers.

That’s the reader side of things. Publishers (and authors) like hardcovers, too, because it means larger profits. Why larger profits? Well, it commands a higher retail price, so there’s a larger amount going back to the publisher per unit sold. And if you want to break down the costs of producing a mass-market paperback vs. a hardcover, the publisher isn’t paying a significant difference when it comes to editorial (the editor is still editing 100,000 words regardless of whether it’s a paperback or a hardcover), packaging, or the interior layouts.

All of this only works in theory, and there are many circumstances when releasing a hardcover is not in a publisher’s best interest. For example, what if the projected sales of the book is actually low? (Or you’re a small press publisher and can only afford a small print-run.) Or for your prospective readers, maybe $30.00 per book is too high a price to risk on a new author. The relationship between hardcovers and mass-market paperbacks is an interesting phenomenon. Here are some scenarios:

(a) Hardcover release followed by mass-market paperbacks a few months down the line. This is the typical formula for most major releases. Basically, it follows the rule of “lots of people will buy the initial expensive release, and a lot of people who couldn’t afford the initial release will buy the cheaper release.”

(b) Same as (a) except the rationale behind the releases is different: instead of maximizing profits, the hardcover sales subsidizes the mass-market printing costs. Why do this? Well, to promote literature in general. This obviously isn’t a strategy practiced by major publishers, but it’s a viable scenario for small presses or third-world publications whose aim is to get the book out there rather than solely earning money.

(c) Mass-market paperback first and a hardcover eventually. The key word here is eventually. This is probably more of unplanned success: the publisher didn’t think that the book would justify a hardcover release so they released it in mass-market paperback. And then it continued to sell and sell. It could also be part of a re-branding. Most recently, I’ve seen this with Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s Dragonlance series. Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first book in the series, was released as a paperback in 1984. Several reprints down the line, the book was eventually compiled into a trade paperback and hardcover. But the book itself, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, was re-released as a hardcover by Wizards of the Coast in 2003. That’s nearly two decades after its original release, but hey, because of (1), people still bought it, and it was apparently lucrative enough for the publisher to consider doing so. While not taking 20 years, Laurell K. Hamilton’s early novels have also been re-released as hardcovers.

How about you, which format do you prefer? Are you a hardcover person or mass-market paperbacker?

About Charles Tan

Charles Tan's fiction has appeared in publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories and Philippine Speculative Fiction. He has contributed nonfiction to websites such as The Nebula Awards (http://nebulaawards.com/), The Shirley Jackson Awards (http://www.shirleyjacksonawards.org/), SF Crowsnest (http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/), SFScope (http://sfscope.com/), Fantasy Magazine (http://www.darkfantasy.org/fantasy/), Fantasy Literature (http://www.fantasyliterature.com/), BSC Review (http://www.bscreview.com/), The World SF News Blog (http://worldsf.wordpress.com/), and SF Signal (http://www.sfsignal.com). In 2009, he won the Last Drink Bird Head Award (http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2009/10/04/the-first-annual-last-drink-bird-head-award-finalists/) for International Activism which is described as "In recognition of those who work to bring writers from other literary traditions and countries to the attention of readers in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia…" You can visit his blog, Bibliophile Stalker (http://charles-tan.blogspot.com/), or the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler (http://philippinespeculativefiction.com/).