Mass Market Paperbacks

[DarrenTR1970]

I'm at work, so I can't look at my shelf, but I know that I've got a few paperbacks that are older than I am sitting there still in good condition; one of them being an early copy of a King Kong adaptation written by Merian C. Cooper
However, there are a few hardback books were the spine is broken/breaking and the pages are falling out.
My most prized possession, and the one book I would save in a fire is "Aircraft Carriers" by Norman Polmar, copyright 1968.
It's the book that got me started on my love of naval history.

 

[veritech]

Even those are going by the wayside. There used to be dozens of used shops within a 30 mile radius, but the only left in our area is a Half-Price Books. Fortunately, our library system still maintains a sale twice a year, where you can come away with a lot of books (and other media) for less than ten bucks.

Speaking of Half-Price Books . . . .

Has anyone noticed an increase in price for mmpb's? It's like they find books that are "collectable" and charge accordingly. Many of the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realm mmpb novels are out of print and are now priced by Half-Price Books at 4 or 5 times their cover price. Same goes for comic book trade paperbacks, etc.

It kind of defeats the purpose of "half-price" used bookstores, right? If I want to pay ebay prices, I will stay home and shop ebay rather than wasting gas to be gouged! lol

 

[DarrenTR1970]

I met my best friend in junior high because she spotted me reading a Doc Savage paperback in the school cafeteria. She later worked at the B. Dalton's bookstore at the mall for years.

One year, my Mom tasked me with helping her friend set up a used bookstore here in Woodinville.
I spent the majority of the summer going through boxes of books, organizing them and putting them on the shelves.
She couldn't afford to pay me, so she gave me the choice of which novel series I could have for free, either an almost complete run of TOS at the time, or an almost complete run of Doc Savage reprints.
I chose the later and managed to acquire the remaining novels through various used bookstores and ended up with a complete set.
I always kept a list handy when shopping to cross check what the store had vs what was on my shelf.
Unfortunately, I had to get rid of them when I lost my job and had to downsize when I moved out of my apartment.
One of the series I would liked to have gotten my hands on was my mother's complete set of original Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mystery novels.
However, my aunt, her eldest sister, got rid of them all when Grandma passed away and she sold the house before we had a chance to go through it and get items we wanted.

 

[vfxart]

It blows that any format of book is set to disappear.
When I want quick info or to have something I can prop up as ref on a screen, I don't mind ebooks, but when I read for the joy of it, then I'm not inclined to grab a digital anything. I want the real deal to sit with. I've bemoaned (people still do that right?) the costs of books over the years as the swindles and bookselling industry continued to fuck itself and others, and MMPBs started to approach what I think of as trade prices. I head to Powell's etc if needed, else yeah eBay or other.
If the standard hardcover to pb gap time still exists, I guess the last that I buy will be books initially published this year...?

 

[Procutus]

My most prized possession, and the one book I would save in a fire is "Aircraft Carriers" by Norman Polmar, copyright 1968.

Mine is a hardcover edition of Sinking of the Titanic: The World's Greatest Sea Disaster, printed in 1912.

 

[ace2k]

The Romance genre's money is made in the eBook format these days.

Makes sense, but I see them enough in stores that there must be some demand for them in a physical format.

 

[mb22]

one of them being an early copy of a King Kong adaptation written by Merian C. Cooper

Probably the 1932 novelization (now public domain) by Delos W. Lovelace, not Cooper.

 

[bdub76]

Makes sense, but I see them enough in stores that there must be some demand for them in a physical format.

BookTok seems to really have driven physical books. Of course, let's no confuse buying books with reading books.

This should make you chuckle. Skip the coloring book stuff and go to the book bit starting at 8 minutes in.

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[JD]

Maybe. I could see Amazon giving people a recommendation when they're browsing other stuff, and then it guides them to buy it & install the Kindle app. Not nearly as convenient as the old-school way, though.

I know at least a few of the book series I've started I only discovered because they came up in the similar items or items customers bought with this/after looking at this/whatever lists on the Amazon page for the latest book in whatever series I was reading at the time. I know it's not quite the same as a pure impulse buy where a random book at Wal-Mart or Target or wherever caught you eye, but it's probably as close as you can get online shopping.

I would certainly agree that e-books are ideally suited for books that only get read once, and then discarded, but I don't do that; I keep almost everything, and I actually re-read a lot of it.

I'm actually a lot mor likely to reread an e-book than I am a physical book. I worry about wear and tear on physical books from repeated reading, but with e-books that's not a concern. And it's a lot easier to just pull an e-book up on my tablet or phone than to dig it out of one of my several overfilled bookshelves.

And as to the lack of bulk and weight of physical books, well, given that I already travel with at least ten pounds of tech (a DOSbook as well as a Chromebook, and anything old enough to be configured as a viable DOSbook is going to be fairly heavy and bulky), and space on my Chromebook is very much at a premium, given that I have Linux apps on it. If a physical book fails (which only happens if the paper or the binding goes bad), it's just one book; if an e-reader fails (and there's a lot more that can go wrong), you're at the mercy of your cloud storage.

You don't need to have a dedicated e-reader for e-books, you can just read them on apps on phones or tables, so as long as you've got at least one of those then you're good.

Then again, with e-books, you're at the mercy of the publisher anyway; they could decide to withdraw a book "with extreme prejudice" at any time, for any reason (or for no reason at all).

I see people talk about this all the time, but I've been buying e-books for around 15-20 years at this point, and I've never had that happen with any of the hundreds of e-books I've bought, and I've only ever even heard about twice, maybe.... I think. And really if you're that worried about it you can always just get a USB stick or a hard drive and just download all of you e-books onto that.

 

[bdub76]

I see people talk about this all the time, but I've been buying e-books for around 15-20 years at this point, and I've never had that happen with any of the hundreds of e-books I've bought, and I've only ever even heard about twice, maybe.... I think. And really if you're that worried about it you can always just get a USB stick or a hard drive and just download all of you e-books onto that.

You can't currently from Amazon. You can from KOBO, which is why I switched. Amazon took away the ability to download your leased books. This is supposed to change next month. We'll see what happens.

Also, books that were released as eBooks sometimes disappear too. You can no longer buy the Eureka novels as eBooks anymore.

 

[JD]

You can download books on the Kindle app, I just downloaded about 5 or 6 different books onto my tablet a couple hours ago.

 

[ATimson]

I see people talk about this all the time, but I've been buying e-books for around 15-20 years at this point, and I've never had that happen with any of the hundreds of e-books I've bought, and I've only ever even heard about twice, maybe.... I think.

With ebooks, my losses have been less from the publisher yanking a specific book and more the retailer deciding they don't want to deal with ebooks anymore. Off the top of my head, I've had purchases from all of the following before they got out of the ebook business: Amazon, Mobipocket, Simon & Schuster, Powell's, Book Depository, eReader.com... and I believe also HarperCollins.

(Also Sony & Borders, but they at least transitioned the libraries to Kobo instead of leaving customers out to dry. Ditto Fictionwise to B&N.)

Not quite enough to drive me back to print, but I can see myself going that way as I get older and crotchety-er.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

One of the series I would liked to have gotten my hands on was my mother's complete set of original Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mystery novels.
However, my aunt, her eldest sister, got rid of them all when Grandma passed away and she sold the house before we had a chance to go through it and get items we wanted.

That would have happened with the woman universally known as "Auntie Jo" in my family (my mother's aunt; so far as I'm aware, she died childless, and so was either an aunt or a great-aunt to possibly more than a dozen who knew her). But my parents and I got to her house before that happened, and I volunteered to deal with the books. I catalogued them on my old TRS-80 Model I desktop computer, in a program I'd written myself, distributed lists to all the relatives, and a few of the books ended up in my own library. (Once everybody had been given a reasonable amount of time to choose what they wanted, the residue went to such places as Bertrand Smith's Acres of Books, and what they didn't want went to Goodwill.

Be that as it may, NF:Treason (2009) is showing just the slightest browning around the edges, and TOS: The Antares Maelstrom (2019) is showing a barely perceptable yellowing on the top edge.

 

[John Clark]

This is supposed to change next month. We'll see what happens.

Hadn't heard about that bit. I'll keep an eye out.

I think my oldest physical book is a hard back copy of the Just So stories by Kipling (1922 edition) and still in very good condition.
That one, I inherited from my Gran and I remember her reading it to me as a youngster.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

You don't need to have a dedicated e-reader for e-books, you can just read them on apps on phones or tables, so as long as you've got at least one of those then you're good.

Yes. I have an e-reader app on my Chromebook. Which I couldn't get rid of if I wanted to, short of having somebody jailbreak and root the thing, and turn it into a pure Linux notebook. And before my cheapass tablet morphed into a paperweight, I had one on it, too.

As to a phone, I take great pride in the fact that I have never owned, much less carried, a full-on smartphone. It was only grudgingly that I gave up my second "candy bar" phone for my first clamshell, and the only reason I got my present clamshell was because the Canadian carriers had dropped all support for even the most advanced protocols it could use, a few months before my first Canadian vacation. Luddites of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your upgrade-treadmills!

And as I said, space on my Chromebook is at an extreme premium.

 

[bdub76]

Hadn't heard about that bit. I'll keep an eye out.

I think my oldest physical book is a hard back copy of the Just So stories by Kipling (1922 edition) and still in very good condition.
That one, I inherited from my Gran and I remember her reading it to me as a youngster.

There was a post on Verge around January of this year that led both my wife and I to backup our entire eBook collection.

Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books

It’s bad if you like to keep ebook backup copies.

www.theverge.com

The biggest downside of the elimination of mass market books is their price point. They're generally sold for less than $10. Whereas you can find eBooks that cost much more. Now, we've been lucky with the Star Trek sales as those make these books really affordable.

 

[John Clark]

There was a post on Verge around January of this year that led both my wife and I to backup our entire eBook collection.

Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books

It’s bad if you like to keep ebook backup copies.

www.theverge.com

The biggest downside of the elimination of mass market books is their price point. They're generally sold for less than $10. Whereas you can find eBooks that cost much more. Now, we've been lucky with the Star Trek sales as those make these books really affordable.

Sorry - misread your post. I thought they were reconsidering that decision and thought it would be a nice surprise. Should have known better

 

[bdub76]

Sorry - misread your post. I thought they were reconsidering that decision and thought it would be a nice surprise. Should have known better

When my 6" KOBO Clara BW showed up, I was honestly a bit underwhelmed, but I've now read about 32 books on it since receiving it this summer, so I'm good with it. I haven't bought/leased an eBook since from Amazon. All of my eBooks have been from KOBO or Humble Bundle.

My biggest issue with eBooks is either lack of availability at the library or that it's missing entirely. My library has no Christopher Pike eBooks.

What I'm not good with yet is editing epub and kepub files. So that's on my to do list for next year.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

That would have happened with the woman universally known as "Auntie Jo" in my family (my mother's aunt; so far as I'm aware, she died childless, and so was either an aunt or a great-aunt to possibly more than a dozen who knew her). But my parents and I got to her house before that happened, and I volunteered to deal with the books. I catalogued them on my old TRS-80 Model I desktop computer, in a program I'd written myself, distributed lists to all the relatives, and a few of the books ended up in my own library. (Once everybody had been given a reasonable amount of time to choose what they wanted, the residue went to such places as Bertrand Smith's Acres of Books, and what they didn't want went to Goodwill.

What pissed me off is that she immediately rid of everything after grandma passed away before we had a chance to go through it.
Mom and Wink were in Colorado; Jan and Eunice in Berkeley, Roxann in West Seattle and I was in Woodinville.
By the time we all gathered at the house, she'd donated it all.
It wasn't just the books I wanted to go through, Mom and her siblings had some albums that I wanted - early Beatles, soundtrack albums, classical, etc.
Those Beatles albums were probably worth some money.

 

[JD]

With ebooks, my losses have been less from the publisher yanking a specific book and more the retailer deciding they don't want to deal with ebooks anymore. Off the top of my head, I've had purchases from all of the following before they got out of the ebook business: Amazon, Mobipocket, Simon & Schuster, Powell's, Book Depository, eReader.com... and I believe also HarperCollins.

(Also Sony & Borders, but they at least transitioned the libraries to Kobo instead of leaving customers out to dry. Ditto Fictionwise to B&N.)

Not quite enough to drive me back to print, but I can see myself going that way as I get older and crotchety-er.

That sucks, that surprises me, I would think they would at least let you have access to the books you've bought, even if you can't buy any more.
I haven't run into that I get all of my e-books from Kindle/Amazon, and Google Play, I figure they're big enough that I should be safe. I do have some books left over from when I was buying e-books on my old Nook, that I read on the Nook app, but I haven't actually bought anything new from them in ages.
I did remember one digital media issue I have run into, out of nowhere my digital copy of the collected edition of the IDW Khan comic suddenly went from the entire miniseries, to just the first issue. I've thought about contact Amazon to see if there was way for them to change it back, but I don't remember when I bought, and while I do save all of my reciepts in a folder in my emails, it would take me ages to search through them all to find it.

There was a post on Verge around January of this year that led both my wife and I to backup our entire eBook collection.

Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books

It’s bad if you like to keep ebook backup copies.

www.theverge.com

The biggest downside of the elimination of mass market books is their price point. They're generally sold for less than $10. Whereas you can find eBooks that cost much more. Now, we've been lucky with the Star Trek sales as those make these books really affordable.

Damn, I didn't know they did that.

My biggest issue with eBooks is either lack of availability at the library or that it's missing entirely. My library has no Christopher Pike eBooks.

Which apps do you get access to? I use have accounts with three different libraries in my area, between the three of them I get access to Hoopla, Overdrive/Libby, and Cloud Library. Cloud Library has Strange New Worlds: Asylum and Toward the Night, and Hoopla has collections of the SNW comic miniseries The Illyrian Enigma, and The Scorpius Run, and the collected edition of Alien Spotlight, which features Pike in one of it's issues, the individual issues and collection of Spock: Reflections which features Pike in #2, the collection of Discovery: Aftermath, the collection and individual issues of Captains' Log, which had a Pike issue, and the audiobook versions of TOS: Enterprise: The First Adventure, and DISC: The Enterprise War.