Literary Kicks' discussion of book pricing has turned toward looking more closely at book formats. I've been working with Levi off-blog to present some ideas about alternatives to hardcover-first releases, but I've discovered that most of what seems innovative has already been tried before.
As book lovers, we're all used to them first coming out in hardcover with a paperback to follow a year later. But did you know that simultaneous triple-format publishing (hardcover, paperback, mass market paperback) has been tried?
And today it is moving, however slowly, toward a new reality—although the latest paper chase sounds like a fairy tale: the Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear deal. The term was coined to describe Tom Robbins' 1980 intermountain fantasy, Still Life with Woodpecker. The book was published simultaneously in a $12.95 hardcover (Papa) and a $6.95 quality paperback (Mama), with a $3.25 mass-market paper edition (Baby) that soon followed. The decent (and once profitable) interval between hard-and soft-cover editions may be a thing of the past. Traditionalists like Random House have begun issuing simultaneous clothbound and paperback editions. Nobody's Angel, by picaresque Novelist Thomas McGuane, is being issued with 5,000 Papas and 30,000 Mamas. Bantam, Ballantine and Pocket Books, three major mass-market houses, shortcut the hard-cover publishers with their own original titles. Jerzy Kosinski's just published Pinball is appearing as a Bantam Papa (5,000), Mama (150,000), with babies yet to be determined.
However, it must not have been very profitable since I haven't seen much news about books being released like the above today. And as far as I can tell, the following hasn't happened yet:
Industry experts predict that by 1990 more than half of all books will originate in soft-cover—a situation that prevails in Europe today. And many of the hard-cover editions will be mere tokens, published in small amounts for libraries, for reviewers who shun paperbacks—and as a boost for authors' egos."Hard Times in Hard-Cover Country"
TIME Magazine
March 22, 1982
It's possible the prediction could still come true, but I don't see publishers giving up very easily on the wider profit margins of hardcovers. That is, until ebook reader technology gets good enough to compete with paper. Does anyone know if Steve Jobs is working on this?
