At long last, hardback books, it seems, are finally drifting into, if not obsolescence, then at least abeyance. It turns out that punters are chary of buying hefty tomes, and so publishers are considering putting books out in paperback first. For once, this is a literary development that I will be applauding.
For centuries, hardback books were the only thing you could buy. In the 1920s, it was impossible to stroll along with a paperback of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse in your pocket to impress the ladies, since paperbacks of that sort did not exist. They are a relatively new beast on the literary scene. It was Allen Lane who brought the sixpenny paperback into the world in the 1930s, a feat for which he should be lauded, on a par with Alexander Fleming.
This led to a bonanza time for authors. The hardback would appear first, receive reviews, and be bought by early readers, libraries and so forth; but authors could then sell the paperback rights to a different publisher (free money!), and a new edition would burst onto the mass market, clothed in cheap and often garish covers.
This, I think, contributed to the sense that a hardback was superior, not to be associated with those ghastly common things that one could buy at railway stations. It’s true that hardbacks do have aesthetic qualities, and I am as susceptible to the charms of a gleaming first edition as the next literary type. A row of them sits on my shelves. There is something undeniably glamorous about, say, an Iris Murdoch first edition, and I coo over my Donna Tartt, and my slipcased Robert Graves (oo-err).
These are all beautifully designed. Early twentieth-century specimens are eminently holdable, and I have a few 19th century editions, which were clearly made to be read. Something, however, went awry with modern hardbacks around the 1980s. Influenced, I guess, by shoulder pads and the ‘bigger is better’ creed, they evolved into something clunky, clumsy and over-large: the boorish husband no one wants to sit next to at dinner.
There is something forbidding about an unread hardback; an unread paperback merely simpers, invitingly
Perversely, these literary leviathans are almost designed not to be read. Reading a hardback in bed can be like going to the gym. After ten minutes, a familiar ache reaches your wrists, for which there is no remedy. As for transportation: good luck hefting that 1000-page history of the Plantagenets onto the Bakerloo line. My hard-back-lugging habit has broken the straps of three satchels, and tipped my Ryanair luggage over the limit.
Sure, we writers delight in seeing our work between hardcovers. It makes us feel we have arrived. The heaven of clothbound editions, or the swooning pleasure of a book with sprayed edges.
Even so, pity the poor debut novelist whose book appears, fresh to the world, in hardback form. Imagine her pleasure when she spots the single copy in Daunts, spine out, on the bottom shelf. Think of her glee when her friends and relatives bleat that they will ‘wait for the paperback’ in a year’s time. These friends and relatives will not admit they think £20 is too much to pay for a mere novel; yet they will spend the same on an energy drink and an indifferent bagel in Gails.
Paperbacks, on the other hand, are one of life’s simple joys: swift, light, a breeze. There is something forbidding about an unread hardback; an unread paperback merely simpers, invitingly. They are also the work-horses of the literary world. Despite their apparent flimsiness, as a form they are remarkably resilient. Nobody will particularly mind if someone places a coffee cup on the cover of your Penguin Classic. They can be turned face-down, dog-eared, underlined, highlighted; left in lavatories, kicked under beds, even dropped in baths, without much real damage done. They are still a snip at (mostly) under a tenner. Because of this, paperbacks make less money per unit for the publisher and author. But surely more people would buy a paperback first edition? Costing less than a bagel at Gails is, indeed, a selling point.
Comments