Several years ago, it was common for movie studios to wait as long as a year after a film was released in theaters to produce a version of movies for sale in stores.
That gave time for them to sell the movie for release on pay-cable channels and perhaps on broadcast networks. Now, movies are released on DVD as soon as a month after appearing in theaters. Contrast that with the book business, where it is still common for publishers to wait nine months to a year after a book is released in hardcover to produce a less expensive paperback version.
Publishers say they see no reason to change that schedule. David Shanks, the chief executive of the Penguin group USA, noted that because books are fully returnable by booksellers, the long time between hardcover and paperback distribution allows publishers to make decisions about paperback printing amounts based on hardcover sales.
That said, many publishers acknowledge that the hard and fast rules are disappearing. Some people want that next bit in the story so they'll go in for the hardcover rather than wait for the price to drop. They're paying for the privilege to be one of the first people to read a book, hot off the presses.
After that market is mined, they move on to cheaper versions. But if they were to release them at the same time some portion of that "want it now" crowd will opt for the paperbacks, therefore reducing some of the profit they're getting out of those HCs.
Okay that makes sense. The price isn't the issue for me though, i'll gladly pay that price, I just really hate reading hardbacks. KatG Granophyric Moderator Staff member. Joined Mar 22, Messages 14, Most of the SFFH category market is launched only in mass market paperback. However, if an author has reached sufficient sales levels with paperbacks in a series, then the next book in the series may be put out first in hardcover or trade paperback because people are then willing to pay for a more durable but more expensive to produce hardcover edition.
Hardcovers also receive more reviews, in both category and non-category media. And libraries buy mostly hardcovers and trade paperbacks, which are easier for them as inventory and those library sales are important. So putting a successful author in hardcover then helps that author get more review attention and library sales which leads hopefully to more sales.
It may also do the same for new books, and so publishers often now do a limited hardcover or trade paperback of a promising new book they think might draw attention. Putting a book in hardcover communicates to booksellers that the publisher is serious about the book and may pay for co-op advertising, and for some readers, the format is seen as indicating substance.
When the wholesale market shrank in the 's, causing publishers to rely more on bookstores for sales, hardcover sales became more important, though in an area like category SFFH, hardcover is still the small part of the game. If a publisher puts out a hardcover edition, the booksellers do not want a mass market paperback coming out too soon as it undercuts their first run hardcover sales, leaving them with a lot of books to return to the publisher or sell off as bargain remainders.
A hardcover might be given six months on the shelves to sell initially. A mass market paperback gets about three months. So ideally, you want a paperback edition to not come out until six months have passed for the hardcover. Since an author is often then putting out the next book in a series, and since the new title is the lure that then helps sell more copies of the whole rest of the series or other works of the author, it is a useful system to put out a hardcover of the new title and a mass market or trade paperback edition of the older titles around the same time.
So it is logical to wait a year for the next book in hardcover before bringing out the mass market paperback edition of the previous title. However, one contender for the book that spent the longest time in hardcover is bestselling YA Novel Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell, which was initially published on February 26, In , a paperback version was published in Spanish.
English readers had to wait an additional four years for the large print paperback. The standard paperback is scheduled for release on June 30, according to bookselling giant Amazon. This means the time between hardcover to paperback for Eleanor and Park varies between one year up to over seven years!
The hardcover was released on February 28, At the time of this writing, readers looking for a paperback copy of The Hate U Give must look to publishing companies outside of the United States. The only formats available from HarperCollins are hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.
The most obvious reason is money. There is still continued interest in the novel, and readers are still interested enough to pay top or slightly discounted dollar to get their hands on the book. The publisher is still raking in the hardcover dough, so there is no need parade the paperback just yet. The situation is similar with Eleanor and Park. With Picturestart acquiring the film rights to Eleanor and Park , more book sales are to be expected since adaptations often boost sales of the original source materials.
Along with being two of the bestselling YA novels in the past several years, Eleanor and Park along with The Hate U Give enjoyed popularity among the general reading public as well as the literary critics. But it never happened. Why do they still do this, and does anyone apart from libraries buy hardbacks?
I never do. Yes, hardbacks are still popular.
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