Last week there was a conversation on a reader’s blog about a highly anticipated story in an author’s ongoing series coming out in hardcover when the previous installments had come out in trade before being reprinted as mass market paperbacks.
There was much said about the different sizes messing up bookshelves, and being a rather OCD person about many things, like the way the paragraphs in my manuscripts line up, I get that. But it doesn’t bother me when it comes to shelving books. Here are the top two shelves of the closest bookcase to me. As you can see, I buy in all formats, though I love hardcover over all others. But the shelving doesn’t bother me because I don’t keep books after I read them. Yep. All these books have yet to be read, but I needed to own them so I could get to them on my own time. This may not be the norm, heh, but my point is that readers as a group are still individuals, and their preferences can’t be lumped together any more than the preferences of chefs or auto mechanics. Chefs have their knives, auto mechanics their tools, but there are any number of velvet lined cases or blocks for holding sharp blades, and tool chests that roll, or don’t, have drawers, or don’t. It all depends on what works for the individual.
One of the comments in the thread had me bumfuzzled. Understand that I’m not speaking here as an author but as a reader. One of the “long-term readers” mentioned in the quote below. A reader who over the years has spent hundreds, nay, thousands of dollars on books – no matter the format – so they’ll be within arm’s reach should that title be the only one to suit my mood. Shoot, I’m the one who each January pre-orders books from all my auto-buys even if they won’t be out for months.
Thing is, though, that bottom line it is not $$$, at least not in terms of long-term readers. Any time this “switching format in the middle of a series” happens even a well-loved author or series, that author’s name automatically drops to the bottom of my must-have list at least for a while. So, it’s just not a good practice for the publishers to make a habit of. It taints the author in my head whether I logically understand it’s not their fault or not because that series sticks out to me from then on as being one I can’t continue.
I can tell myself it’s the publishers fault all I want to but in the end it’s the author and series I’m looking for and being frustrated about not being able to continue. Possibly for months, even up to a year or more. So, $$$?
Somehow, I think not. Not if I’m multiplied by thousands of other readers each time they do this.
I’m not even going to talk about the placing blame and whose fault anything is because I’m in publishing and I know who makes those decisions and why. I wanted to pull out the last line, about thousands of other readers holding the same opinions, sharing the same habits as this reader and the others who commented in the thread.
Know what? I’ll bet there are just as many readers out there like me!
I don’t keep books. I don’t care what my shelves look like. I buy way more than I’ll ever read. I prefer hardcover because with the online discounts available they’re only a few dollars more than paperbacks. If I’m reading a series, I’ll read no matter that the formats don’t match. Take the Jack Kerley books I just discovered. I read the first electronically, have the second in a US edition paperback, the 3rd on my iPod Touch, and the ones that follow in the UK edition paperbacks which are NOT the same size as those published here. I don’t care. I want to read them badly enough that if he mailed me a long hand printed scroll, I would. See? The two UK paperbacks are taller.
For the life of me, I don’t get why a format will keep a reader from reading a book. Hating the messed up shelving, sure. Hating the jump in price, sure. But not reading? Stopping a series because the book is in a different format than the previous ones? Nope. Don’t get it at all. Not when there are libraries, used book stores, friends who share copies. And that’s where the rest of my point comes in. Friends who share copies. This is a big reason that I can’t assume readers as a group will behave the same way. The years I worked at an oil company, I worked with voracious readers. They would buy the rattiest used books they could to have a story they’d missed. (I won’t touch ratty books with a ten foot pole, and have left negative feedback for sellers who advertise something as “like new” when it’s falling apart at the spine.)
Those women didn’t keep books. They traded with each other. They traded back to used bookstores. They tossed in the trash if no one else wanted when they were done. Those readers were not active online, didn’t know about Romantic Times until I showed one of them a copy. To my mind, those were real world readers. Readers who use word of mouth to turn a quiet little book into a monster of a bestseller. And they’re why I can’t give readers as a group a particular behavior, whether stores they buy in, format they buy in, or the way they shelve. So, yes, maybe there will be many many readers who won’t follow a series into hardcover, but there will be just as many readers who will fight their way to a copy. And to prove my point? Around the same time as the above blog conversation? Readers on Twitter were sharing that they’d pre-ordered the book in question and couldn’t wait to have it in their hot little hands!
Oh, here are two more of the shelves on my bookcase. I’m nothing if not consistent in my mess and my READER – not author – love for hardcovers!
