[worry]

What do you think? Is it good riddance or are you gonna cry into your fat little copy of The Sword of Shannara?
https://www.publishe...paperbacks.html

Quote

Last Call for Mass Market Paperbacks
The format credited with making books more accessible via low prices and widespread availability will all but vanish from the publishing scene in a few weeks<h3></h3>The decision made this winter by ReaderLink to stop distributing mass market paperback books at the end of 2025 was the latest blow to a format that has seen its popularity decline for years. According to Circana BookScan, mass market unit sales plunged from 131 million in 2004 to 21 million in 2024, a drop of about 84%, and sales this year through October were about 15 million units. But for many years, the mass market paperback was “the most popular reading format,” notes Stuart Applebaum, former Penguin Random House EVP of corporate communications. Applebaum was also once a publicist at Bantam Books, one of the publishers credited with turning mass market paperbacks into what he calls “a well-respected format.”...

[QuickTidal]

As an old, I find it harder and harder to read MMPBs anyways, as they always set the font too small. So good riddance?

[Tsundoku]

Most of my collection is MMPBs, but I can't read them much anymore because I just get eyestrain. It's always nice to have a physical copy, and that's what I do with special books, but I'm mostly e-book now.
I still have around 1500 hard copy books, but that number has been growing only very, very slowly of late.

To the relief of the removalists.

I should do something about it, cut them down somehow but I've done a few culls and don't really want to do much more.
At least hard copies can't be deleted easily by the publishers, or whatever BS it is that some companies say about your digital content being "on loan" and not yours.

[Abyss]

Other than the occasional 2HS find i only buy dead tree for special or signed editions now, am otherwise all e and earbook, so while i can look fondly back on mmpbs and have some cherished ones on the shelf, nbd for me.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

I do feel a little bit of nostalgia for the old days of having one or two rolled up in my pockets (... did anyone ever mistake them for a gun or two? probably...).

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 16 December 2025 - 03:14 PM, said:

Other than the occasional 2HS find i only buy dead tree for special or signed editions now, am otherwise all e and earbook, so while i can look fondly back on mmpbs and have some cherished ones on the shelf, nbd for me.

I'm not even just hardcover either (Font is bigger) for the collected ones...I will actively seek out Large Type Edition hardcovers for physical if they exist...LOL. And I mean, I'm not ancient, but also why would you NOT read in big font comfort if you could?

This is why my kindle font is always jacked up.

But yeah, I'm hardcover collections only on existing series I need to finish in that format (Dresden, Green Rider, ect.)...everything else is ebooks and library.

[JPK]

 Azath Vitr (D, on 16 December 2025 - 04:36 PM, said:

I do feel a little bit of nostalgia for the old days of having one or two rolled up in my pockets (... did anyone ever mistake them for a gun or two? probably...).

Rolled up!? That made me wince a little.

I shifted away from MMPBs about a decade ago when TPBs became more popular in the States. Roughly around The First Law was releasing.

[Abyss]

That was another thing, once i started adulting and had some money i was not waiting a year past the hb release for the mmpb or my library to get a copy, so dead tree mmpbs were fairly quickly relegated to a thing i bought if i happened to find a complete set 2nd hand somewhere or needed an airplane read.