I actually loved the older standard-size style paperbacks. I could just slip in my back pocket and take where ever. I wasn't aware that they stopped producing them in 2024.

Now my little xteink reader takes the place of it.

And this is a very important tidbit from the article that tells us the actual reason people stopped buying paperbacks. Greed of the publishers:

As to affordability, ¢25 (the price of each of Pocket Books’ titles) went a lot further in 1939 than it does now but was still a consumer-friendly price point. It was just slightly higher than what our great-great-grandparents would have paid for a gallon of gas and slightly lower than what they’d have paid for a dozen eggs. In 2024, the format’s last year of full national distribution, a new mass-market paperback would set you back three times as much as a dozen eggs or a gallon of gas.

Paperbacks are bonkers expensive now. They tried to turn them into a luxury item and then act surprised when people are sharing and borrowing them more and sales just keep declining.

To be honest I’m surprised people still buy books. I read quite a bit but borrow everything from the library.

I love my e-readers, but I still buy and read paperbacks too. I was just gifted one a few months ago.

I'm old (+60)

i ditched 90% of my physical books long ago. I do read physical books occasionally from the library but i much prefer the ebooks. Same reason i prefer music as a file then on a record, tape or CD.

i see zero need for fiction books to be dead trees. A system of a display of physical books and then scan a qr code in the book to down load it might be nice.

Paid streaming is the devil, though I do occasionally listen to music streamed via internet radio.

I just buy hard covers for the physical copy and read on e-reader or audiobook. Like I bought the leather bound versions of my favorite Brandon Sanderson books, but they'll stay for display only :)

I can’t do e-reading. I need an actual book. I also hate hardback books. I want to curl that thing, I want the cover all beat-up and dog-eared.

According to AmortizationTable.org, 25 cents in 1939 is equivalent to $5.79 today, adjusted for inflation.

There are very few new books available for less than $6.00 these days, let alone the convenience of a Pocket Book format. I was lucky to grow up during their peak of popularity, buying and reading a dozen or two each year. A whole book at the cost of two or three chocolate bars, when I was young.

With all the improvements in technology in the past 50 years, it is difficult to understand how the cost hasn't come down. But instead, it has gone up. These days, if I find an interesting new book for under $60, I consider it a bargain.

Remove easy access to books, remove proper journalism, remove facts.

Welcome to the future.

Well this spurred me to buy 4 paperbacks from Abe books. Been buying them used from there for a while, and they always turn up great. Each like $5 or less.

I'm a big fan of paperback originals that were published in the 50s-70s. These are books that were first published in paperback at a time when more respectable books were always first published in hardcover. Most of them are genre (sci fi, detective, spy, romance, crime, horror, action) and prioritize entertainment over literary appeal. They were the sort of books that people would buy near the cash register and read at the bus stop or during their lunch break.

My local non-used book stores barely stock any of the mass market format books that spawned the paperback original; everything has moved to the more expensive trade format. Fortunately there are decades of books still available in the old mass market format. You can certainly find them online and at used bookstores, but I recommend checking out your local library annual sale (https://booksalefinder.com/) for a fun and cheap way to acquire reading entertainment.

My bi-weekly trips to the library for the last 50 years has made me ignorant of issues like this.

Found an archive of the full version (look for the first archive, made by archiveteam).

I was going to set out on a rant about how expensive books have become, but then I realized that this does not hold true for my personal experience, which does not go back to the 1950s. But in the 1990s I bought an 800-page paperback for what would be €18 today. I could buy this book right now (different and probably slightly better edition, but still a paperback) for €22. That's not so bad imo.

And this is not an outlier; I tend to buy books for my relatives' birthdays etc. and paperbacks are still cheap. Not to speak of the used books market which is huge. All online of course.

Our historically cheapest type of paperback - the "Reclamheft" - is still cheaper than all that, as it used to be way back when. Less than half of the above for the Classics.

The range of titles is wide, too, and one doesn't even have to use the big bad A. Maybe our book market is not "over-consolidated" yet.

But I'm not closing my eyes to yet another hypercapitalistic trend potentially sloshing over.

I get it. I became a reader later in life. I now realize that what held me back from reading the most was holding the book. I know it sounds dumb but hard covers are too heavy, and keeping a paperback open at the page was annoying. I read magazines, newspapers and comics without issue, but hard covers and paperbacks I could not handle. Now, with ebooks and a slim e-reader, I read about two to three books a week when I have spare time.

Also, I don't have the bookshelf space for the amount of books I consume.

I read that Atlantic piece and think it has plenty of merit. I suppose that corporate decisions were made that made the paperbacks less attractive, but I still believe much of it comes down to the culture of aversion to reading long form text, preferring instead bite-sized diversions from our phones.

I’m not sure I agree this is making a difference in the recent downturn in literacy scores dating to around 2012. The books available in the drug stores, airports, and grocery stores have been the trash mass appeal types since I remember, but the publishers are still publishing plenty of variety and even if they stopped altogether there are a plethora of interesting books that already exist across the spectrum. I don’t think it makes sense for this to factor significantly into recent shifts.

The decline in bookstores seems a more reasonable guess since that cut off an access point for browsing a good variety. Maybe also the decline of mall culture which probably brought more casual browsers into bookstores than a standalone barnes and noble in a strip mall does.

If I were to look for causes explaining a reduced desire to read among kids I would look at whether parents are reading to kids less or maybe less likely to sign them up for library reading programs, whether districts/teachers are offering less variety of book options for their K-8 classes, whether reading programs at schools or libraries are offering less lucrative prizes or generally encouraging it less than they used to.

killed

Hmm.

Hyperbole? Conspiratorial thinking?

That article was too long to read ;)

Reading takes a mental load, and when times are tough are lazy brains don't want to work for entertainment. It needs to save that bandwidth for getting resources.

That's why the article references the Great Depression and the reading resurgence that followed. Especially important because "common sense" would say that cheap and easily resellable media (free from libraries) would have been on of the few things people could afford during GD. With FDR providing a social safety net after, the people could "afford" to read for relaxation. It all comes back to Maslows hierarchy of need, if the basics aren't met, nothing else matters, we regress.

Which is important because it's easier to fix then people think. Gotta fulfill basic needs and suddenly everything gets better for everyone. Even just day to day life, dealing with stressed people sucks. If the majority of people have basic needs met, everything just moves smoothly.

They make a lot of great points, though both parts of this story can be true at the same time.

E-books have really occupied a lot of the market paperbacks used to occupy. Hardcover books maintain a niche of being very giftable, more so than paperback.

But the lack of cheap books for sale in everyday places means they’re missing out on the extra-casual readers like me, who maybe pick up a book once or twice a year if I happen to see one that looks interesting and I know I’m going to be somewhere without cell service for a few days.

So while it makes sense that they’ve cut that as demand has softened, it has created a bit of a snowball effect. Fewer people reading means fewer books for sale which means fewer people reading…. meaning they’ve created a feedback loop that will hurt their own business and the country as a whole in the long run.