Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Trade Paperback
James Rogers (jetan@ionet.net)
Thu, 11 Mar 1999 18:11:44 -0600 (CST)
At 09:22 AM 3/11/99 -0700, Greg S. wrote:
>
>Although one of the authors on this list could probably
set us straight,
>my understanding is that the difference is largely one
of distribution.
>Mass-market paperbacks may be "stripped" by booksellers.
In stripping,
>the bookseller tears off the covers of books which
remain unsold for a few
>months. The covers are sent back to the distributor and
then the publisher
>for credit. The books themselves are sent to the
landfill.
>
>Trade paperbacks are distributed like hardbacks. Books
are
>normally not returned for credit and, when they are, the
entire book must
>be returned.
>
>While most trade paperbacks are larger size, I recall
that the Black
>Lizard line was distributed as trade paperbacks. Since
the original Black
>Lizard books were the same size as mass market
paperbacks, I'd speculate
>there might have been a great deal of frustration on the
part of
>booksellers who tore the covers off what appeared to be
mass-market
>paperbacks and then asked for credit. Oops!
>
This is exactly correct. The point was brought forcibly home
to me
when, as a youth working in a bookstore, I "stripped" 100
copies of the
Vintage Books _Dain Curse_. It had been released as a tie-in
with a Jason
Robards television mini-series and was indistinguishable from
all of the
thousands of movie tie-in titles I *should* have been
stripping. As a result
of this incident, for a long time I believed that the "trade"
moniker sprang
from the fact that one could "trade" them back to the
publisher....not true,
but I'm sure that you can see where the idea would have stuck
in my mind.
James
James Michael Rogers
jetan@ionet.net
Mundus Vult Decipi
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