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Too much stuff about comics here. The TPB was already in use many years before comic books hijacked the term with the wrong usage. -- Pc13 11:39, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
re:
==
FrankB, I think you are missing the point here. Yes, mass Market paperbacks *are* still in use for genre (or "pulp") fiction like Sci-fi, Mystery, and Military/Spy thrillers (as your Clancy example shows), but the point is that they simply are no longer in use for literary fiction, even if the publisher is large like Random House. Try getting Updike or Marquez in Mass Market Paperbacks these days. This wasn't always the case, of course: as late as the 1970s even literary authors were published in pocket paperbacks. And it *is* quite common for new "literary" authors to be published in (trade) paperback originals -- a recent example was Alice Greenway's "White Ghost Girls". // Jonathan
If I'm not mistaken, another important difference between mass market paperbacks and trade paperbacks is the returns policy. MPBs can be stripped and the covers returned to the publisher for credit (as evidence that the book was unsold and destroyed). It used to be this saved the publisher money in shipping costs. But as printing costs have gone up, the number of copies a book has to sell to make MPB return policy cost-effective has also gone up, and more midlist titles are appearing only in TPB, which have to be returned whole by the bookseller if they remain unsold. Trade paperbacks are more likely to be remaindered like hardbacks, whereas MPBs are more likely to be stripped and destroyed. -- Jim Henry 19:38, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
OK, I've cleaned up the page and updated the image. I removed the cleanup tags because I'm satisfied that the article is now OK and not in need of cleanup. I hope this was OK? Any comments/suggestions warmly welcome, or just edit away! Cheers. -- HughL talk?/ contribs • 10:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
This disambiguation page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||
|
Too much stuff about comics here. The TPB was already in use many years before comic books hijacked the term with the wrong usage. -- Pc13 11:39, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
re:
==
FrankB, I think you are missing the point here. Yes, mass Market paperbacks *are* still in use for genre (or "pulp") fiction like Sci-fi, Mystery, and Military/Spy thrillers (as your Clancy example shows), but the point is that they simply are no longer in use for literary fiction, even if the publisher is large like Random House. Try getting Updike or Marquez in Mass Market Paperbacks these days. This wasn't always the case, of course: as late as the 1970s even literary authors were published in pocket paperbacks. And it *is* quite common for new "literary" authors to be published in (trade) paperback originals -- a recent example was Alice Greenway's "White Ghost Girls". // Jonathan
If I'm not mistaken, another important difference between mass market paperbacks and trade paperbacks is the returns policy. MPBs can be stripped and the covers returned to the publisher for credit (as evidence that the book was unsold and destroyed). It used to be this saved the publisher money in shipping costs. But as printing costs have gone up, the number of copies a book has to sell to make MPB return policy cost-effective has also gone up, and more midlist titles are appearing only in TPB, which have to be returned whole by the bookseller if they remain unsold. Trade paperbacks are more likely to be remaindered like hardbacks, whereas MPBs are more likely to be stripped and destroyed. -- Jim Henry 19:38, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
OK, I've cleaned up the page and updated the image. I removed the cleanup tags because I'm satisfied that the article is now OK and not in need of cleanup. I hope this was OK? Any comments/suggestions warmly welcome, or just edit away! Cheers. -- HughL talk?/ contribs • 10:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)