E-Books and Paperback Book Publishing

E-books continue to change the face of book publishing. Indeed, now book publishers are putting out paperbacks in no time flat.

From a piece in the New York Times...

Publishers say they have a new sense of urgency with the paperback, since the big, simultaneous release of hardcover and electronic editions now garners a book the bulk of the attention it is likely to receive, leaving the paperback relatively far behind. They may also be taking their cues from Hollywood, where movie studios have trimmed marketing costs by steadily closing the gap between the theatrical release of films and their arrival on DVD.

“I’m looking to do it more and more,” Jane von Mehren, the publisher of trade paperbacks at Random House, said of releasing paperbacks early. “We feel as though there is this trade paperback book buyer that we want to make sure is still getting served. The idea that someone would wait for a year is an assumption that we should no longer make. So we’re looking at shortening the window.”

The future of the trade paperback has been a frequently debated topic among publishers, who have long seen the paperback release as a moment of reinvention, in which they can take a book that was already out, redesign its cover and pitch it to a wider audience.

“We think our job as paperback publisher is to find the second life for the book, to bring an extra dimension to the audience for the paperback,” said Anne Messitte, the publisher of Vintage/Anchor, part of Random House. “We watch each book very carefully to determine the best moment for paperback publication.”