Big 5 Shift From Paperbacks

 

The Big 5 are again trying to game the marketplace. Will it pay off?

The Wall Street Journal says the Big 5 are trending towards doing away with — or delaying the release of a trade paperback when they publish in hardcover for its nonfiction titles. The number of new paperback titles, says Bowker Books in Print in an article, are down by 42 percent over the past five years.

Traditional book publishing a generation ago would release a book in hard cover. A year later it would do a trade paperback edition, then a mass market book.

Then came the advent of the e-book.

Big publishers would then release the hardcover first and then the e-book three to six months later, and the trade paperback another six months after that. The mass market edition started to disappear.

Then came a time where a hardcover was not produced all of the time, and the paperback came out, possibly simultaneously with the e-book.

Further tweaking had then led to the same-day release of all formats: hardcover, paperback, e-book, and audiobook.

But today’s trend is pushing a big path to selling the hardcover without a trade paperback option. The problem with this is the spread in price between a hardcover and an e-book is huge. Will this drive more people to gravitate towards e-books or will e-book prices rise to decrease the price gap?

Fiction is a different story. The trend there is for simultaneous release in all four formats.

As for the indie and self-publishing world, they mainly rely on the e-book and trade paperback, with some audio books and a handful of hardcover copies being made available.

One day there will be one format, some version that gets downloaded into our brain’s hard drive and that gets accessed by our AI-driven subconsciousness. Ok, that may be a few generations away, but who knows?

For now, we will see if the Big 5 move away from adult nonfiction pays off financially and in getting more book readers.

 

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About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over four million pageviews. With 5,000+ posts over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2025.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully).

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum