Covering Multiple Formats

Honestly, I wouldn't bother with the MMPB format. For a self-published book, you'd just be competing with yourself. If you're really interested in investigating other formats, give audio a look.

Marissa D said:

Honestly, I wouldn't bother with the MMPB format. For a self-published book, you'd just be competing with yourself. If you're really interested in investigating other formats, give audio a look.

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This. As for audio, I never tried it because it's so expensive and I am not sure the ROI would be worth it from what I hear. I've been interested in the possibility though but unless more avoidable options come along I won't be dealing with it.

D. E. Wyatt said:

I'm curious where exactly the competition lies, since MMPB and TPB historically cover different markets.

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I think these days the different markets are ebook vs. pbook, not mass market vs. trade.

It's also worth noting some publishers are moving away from mass market altogether (or at least were a few years back).

D. E. Wyatt said:

I'm curious where exactly the competition lies, since MMPB and TPB historically cover different markets.

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Huh? How so?

D. E. Wyatt said:

As a reader I honestly prefer the mass markets over trades, and I always had a fantasy MMPB tucked away in my jacket pocket when I was at school. Can't do that with a trade. E-Readers have sort of taken that role, but honestly they still don't have the same portability as the pocket books. Come to think of it, even today most of the fiction I have in my collection are mass market.

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I'll try to get someone more knowledgeable than I am to post, but the size of mass market paperbacks was tied to the so-called "spinner racks" of drug stores and the like. The use of "trade paperback" or "trade edition" is a U.S.-centric reference to a softcover edition that is larger than mass market, was usually preceded by a hard cover, and is printed on higher quality (and lower acid) paper than a conventional mass market paperback. They are sometimes referred to a "B-size" paperbacks, and are about 5.3 in × 8.5 in. From the POV of a former typesetter, they are interesting in that they did not have to be re-typeset when they were the follow-up to a hard cover edition. The page size was similar enough that the same pre-press could be used, unlike the mass market which had to be re-set. This meant that it could be economical (and have enough profit margin) to have a smaller press run of a trade paperback, which in the case of fiction, often went directly to book clubs.

What liz said. The main two markets competing with each other are ebook vs. print. MMPBs are falling by the wayside.

D. E. Wyatt said:

Trade paperbacks were usually released as a less-expensive alternative to hardcovers, and were the books that would be primarily distributed to the actual bookstores. Mass market was traditionally distributed to your grocery store, department store, Walgreens, or Walmart book aisles and magazine racks, and these were more intended as impulse buys (cheaper to produce, too). Granted, even in the past there was some overlap and MMPBs would turn up in the bookstores, too (all of my copies of the Sword of Truth books are mass market. Except for Wizard's First Rule, which I snagged at a stop on a field trip in high school I picked all of them up at either B. Dalton, Walden, or Books-A-Million. Also, most of the old Star Wars EU was released in mass market first).

As a reader I honestly prefer the mass markets over trades, and I always had a fantasy MMPB tucked away in my jacket pocket when I was at school. Can't do that with a trade. E-Readers have sort of taken that role, but honestly they still don't have the same portability as the pocket books. Come to think of it, even today most of the fiction I have in my collection are mass market.

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Mass market pb were pretty much the only pb, including in bookstores, until a couple decades ago, when the trade pb took hold -- here's a hint, it sells for more (bringing a larger margin even considering the paper and size), but served the exact same function as the traditional, mass market size. There are still plenty of mass market in bookstores, more in some genres than others, but they're not competing markets.

D. E. Wyatt said:

In which case if all it costs me is a bit of time reformatting the text to fit the size of the MMPB, it seems there's really no harm in putting one out just to cover what market is left for the format (incidentally I've read in other places recently that rumors of MMPB's death is greatly exaggerated).

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I don't think the format is dead. But I don't think it's competition for trade, either.

Mass market paperbacks aren't dead yet, and I'd like to have them for my books, too. But it's just...you're spending money on sentiment. And time. There's a lot of either your time or a fee to be paid, plus figuring out the distribution bugs (does Amazon even stock them, and if so, what's the procedure, etc.) for very little return. If you were trade pubbed, your publisher would handle this or not (probably not). For SP, unless you do a bunch of book fairs and cons, print is such a small part of your profit that many choose not to even bother with paperbacks. Putting out even a 5 by 8 trade paperback is a bit of a sentimental move, considering all the extra work for that. It's mostly for your fans who prefer to read paper. The very few I've sold are usually from readers who first picked up my ebook.

It's your time and money, so of course you can do what you like with it. But as advised upthread, you'd be better off to spend your efforts in audio.

CathleenT said:

But it's just...you're spending money on sentiment. And time.

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And on the cost of another ISBN, if you're in the US.

The only other print format besides trade pb that I've ever considered is hardcover, and that just for any YA I might self-publish, because the library market is an important one in YA.

So what size do you generally use for your self-pub paperbacks?

sandree, I use 5 by 8 for my paperbacks. It's the smallest, most portable size, and I can't compete with the cost per unit on print runs anyway, so I'm not going to tinker around with it, trying to find which size is the most economical and getting stuck with a big 6 by 9 brick. Since I don't really have the personality that takes to selling at cons and things, I'm not really going to worry much about the print market. I just want to have paperbacks available for any of my readers who want them, and as a side issue, me.

And this is sentiment, but I feel like more of a real author if I have a physical book. In this case, though, I think it might also be wise to at least offer POD, to distinguish me from the content mills and such. And for the readers who prefer them.

And in case anyone's interested in selling at cons, I asked earlier on kboards this year, before the terrible meltdown, if it would be better to put energy into selling at cons or into audiobooks, and the answer was overwhelmingly to pursue audiobooks. Even for those who enjoyed selling at cons and were presumably good at it, covering expenses with a little pocket change left over was considered a reasonably good result. So if you like cons and want to sell books to fund your way to attending these things, you can do that and maybe pick up a few readers at the same time, and in that case it would be worth doing. But if you're not planning on going to the cons anyway, it's not likely you're going to pay many bills that way. I gather that a lot of cons are just too crowded.

The thread I started had a lot more info on it, with actual numbers and sage advice for best practices (I can remember two in particular--cover your table when you're not there (because of dust), and there's no such thing as too much chocolate mixed in with your display), but I can't pull up my old threads on kboards anymore. I get a redirect when I try now--the new parent corporation wants to sell me something instead. So, I'm sorry, but a lot of those particulars were lost. I couldn't find it on a google search, which is the only way I can seem to find kboards threads now.

Back on the subject of print size, I also remember that a lot of people on kboards liked 5.5 by 8.5, but I don't remember why.

One of the reasons I like 5 by 8 is that it's also a size that Ingram does in hardcover. If you do your hardcover and paperback in the same trim size, then you don't have to reformat the book between the two book styles. So I'd take that into account when choosing trim sizes.

I just reread my response, and really, my overwhelming thought was "All that info for such a simple question." It seems like every moving piece of this thing is complicated sometimes.

D. E. Wyatt said:

In which case if all it costs me is a bit of time reformatting the text to fit the size of the MMPB, it seems there's really no harm in putting one out just to cover what market is left for the format (incidentally I've read in other places recently that rumors of MMPB's death is greatly exaggerated).

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If you're not a fairly experienced typesetter, you're going to end up with a very expensive book, and even if you're a top notch typesetter, the cover price will exceed the standard for mass market paperbacks.

The mass market paperback from trade publishers is alive and well; it costs them about 2.00/book to print (or less, as little as 1.00), counting cover and art. Self-publishers using POD can't compete with that price point, or the distribution.