The mass market paperback, once a defining feature of drugstores, airports, and supermarket checkout aisles, is effectively finished after almost a century in circulation.
Industry figures show just how fast the collapse has been. In 2006, Americans bought roughly 103 million mass market paperbacks. Last year, that number fell below 18 million. The final blow came when ReaderLink, the largest supplier of books to airports and big box retailers, dropped the format entirely, removing it from most mainstream retail channels, according to a report by The New York Times.
For much of the 20th century, mass market paperbacks were revolutionary. Historian Paula Rabinowitz describes them as one of the great technologies of the modern era, compact, affordable books that put reading within reach of millions. The format traces its roots to Allen Lane and the rise of Penguin paperbacks in the 1930s, before spreading rapidly across the United States during World War II, when pocket sized books filled soldiers’ bags.
These small paperbacks fueled entire genres. Pulp fiction, westerns, romance novels, thrillers, and crime stories sold in enormous volumes, often with lurid covers designed to catch the eye from a spinning rack. They also helped launch major literary careers. Stephen King has said that paperback sales of Carrie gave him the financial freedom to quit teaching.
But reader habits slowly shifted. First came ebooks, especially popular among heavy readers who once carried stacks of mass markets. Then came audiobooks. At the same time, publishers and retailers realized that trade paperbacks cost only slightly more to produce but could sell for significantly higher prices. With margins far better on larger formats, stores followed consumer behavior.
ReaderLink CEO Dennis Abboud summed it up simply: retailers follow the consumer. Airport retailer Hudson has now removed mass market paperbacks from convenience stores altogether, keeping them only in limited selections at dedicated bookstores. Publishers say affordability alone was not enough to save the format, even as book prices climbed elsewhere.
The mass market paperback is not entirely extinct. Schools still buy large quantities of cheap editions of classics like To Kill a Mockingbird and 1984, and collectors hunt vintage pulps at used bookstores such as The Strand. But new releases have largely moved on. Even series that began as mass markets, such as Bridgerton, are now printed only in trade paperback or hardcover.
For younger readers, the shift feels permanent. Eighteen year old Landon DeLille, quoted by the Times, said pocket sized books once drew him into reading. Yet when he left the Strand, it was with a signed trade paperback in hand.
After nearly a hundred years, the humble mass market paperback has reached its final chapter. Its influence remains, but its place on the rack is gone.