Someone mentioned in passing that mass market paperbacks were declining.
I realized that, while I hadn't consciously noted that fact, I had been kind of aware of it. Once it was said out loud, it seemed suddenly obvious.
For definition purposes: Mass market are the small paperbacks, the kind that sell in spin racks at the grocery/drug stores. Or rather, once upon a time sold in spin racks at the grocery/drug stores.
I grew up on these. During my first year at U of O, I'd go to the nearby Safeway and buy a SF paperback almost every week. Most of the SF, Fantasy, and Mystery books I read probably came in the form of mass market paperbacks.
But it was very noticeable when Linda and I owned a used bookstore, (The Bookmark), that most mainstream or literary novels came either as hardback or trade paperbacks. (Trade paperback is the term used for larger paperbacks.) We still got genre books as mass market, but it seemed harder and harder to get the good ones.
Perhaps one of the reasons the good ones were hard to find was because they simply weren't being produced. The spin racks have all but disappeared in the drug stores and grocery stores where they used to be found. Walmart and Target and such have sections, but the selection seems very limited.
The reason I hadn't completely realized it was happening at Pegasus Books was because I had already transitioned to trade paperbacks whenever possible, with hardbacks and mass market coming secondarily. The reason for this was that I had limited space to display books. Since trade paperbacks take up the same amount of rack space spine out as mass market books, I went with the more upscale books.
But I also did this because I could most often find the titles I wanted in the larger format.
It's curious and I wonder what the future entails.
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