Forests and Trees...

Several months ago I read where the publishing world wanted to phase out mass market paperbacks in favor of the larger (but still paperback) trade format. Among the reasons cited were a decline in sales of mass market books, and the notion that young readers, having grown up on bombastic TV and explosive video games, require a larger, more visual format.

I cried out loud. And continue to do so, especially when I walk into a bookstore and see all the newest editions of back list titles now out as trade paperbacks.

Not because I would lament the demise of the mass market format; I really couldn’t care less. The problem is the loss of the most affordable format, be it mass market or otherwise (I don’t count e-books here chiefly because they’re not actual books – this is another subject).

The real problem is that while mass market books are served in the most affordable package, they’ve become not as affordable as they used to be. As prices have crept up to eight bucks and higher, moved closer and closer to discounted hardcovers, they’ve crossed the line where the average reader can go into a bookstore and take a flyer on five or six books and walk away with enough money for the bus fare home. All the fancy cover art and lauding blurbs won’t make a difference.

The solution to this dilemma is twofold. First, lower the prices of mass market books. If you can’t sell them for eight bucks, you’re sure the hell not going to sell them for fourteen bucks. I don’t care how many video games I’ve played. You say the publishers can’t sell enough books at five bucks to make their profit goals? That’s probably right. So the second solution to the declining sales problem is to publish better books.

It sounds trite but it isn’t. Why do so many brilliant genre authors fail to live up to their first two books? They haven’t lost their abilities and talents, I don’t think they can. I think they naturally settle into their book a year contracts and ease the foot off the gas ever so slightly. As long as their sales figures reach a certain level, their publishers keep them on and things roll along in an underachieving equilibrium.

I’ve heard it said at conferences that most editors are young, in many cases much younger than their writers. The disparities in life, reading and cultural experience must make the actual editing of a seasoned author’s work problematic. Can’t we find a way, without infringing upon the writer’s creative rights, to point out plot holes, clichéd characters, or simply instances where the current book doesn’t do quite live up to the standards of the last one? Can’t we demand a little more than books that earn reviews with the phrases “not one of his/her best efforts,” or “long time readers will find this book interesting but it’s not likely to attract new ones”?

For eight bucks a pop, or fourteen or twenty, and even for five measly dollars, I deserve more than a book I may not want to read to the end, a book that I leave in McDonald’s or in the flap in the chair in front of me on the airplane. Give me a more consistent quality experience with books, whatever the format, and I’ll buy them.

I just have to be able to afford them, and there has to be a reasonable chance that the best thing about them isn’t the cover art. The more affordable they are, the more chances I can take; the better the overall quality of the material, the more reading will actually take place.

Harry Potter proves that good books can coexist with video games. It’s the appeal of the material that matters, not whether it’s printed on a page or projected on a TV screen. But that’s a subject for another time.