--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Patrick King
<abrasax93@...> wrote:
>
> What appears to be going on in modern publishing,
is
> that a specific price is wanted for every
book:
> hardcovers about $30.00, paperbacks about
$10.
This seems to be true, alas.
To
> justify these prices, publishers offer a lot of
paper.
¿But don't people buy the slimmer books at the same price as
the fat ones, around $10? If I want to buy a paperback copy
of Double Indemnity, I doubt that they'll give me a discount
because the book is short... This seems to contradict the
fact that the thickness is what drives the price up.
> I remember when Peyton Place came out in
paperback.
> That was the original "blockbuster" book, and
quite
> 'noir,' too, btw. It was about 400 pages as I
recall
> and it sold for 50 cents, 15 cents more than
most
> paperbacks at that time. It seems to me
that
> publishers noted a great big book could justify
a
> higher price. Now, they don't want anything but
great
> big books and they'll ruin a perfectly good
little
> story by forcing it into fat format.
It's happening all right... the last Robert B. Parker novel I
read
(quite a while ago, not very recently) was a hardcover, and a
story that would have been fine as a short story, or at most
a novella, was stretched into a novel by padding. In that
case, they also did the design with bigger type and wider
spacing of lines, to make it seem longer. I thought there was
something ridiculous about the trick. And I've read enough
books where a subplot or some secondary characters were used
to pad a perfectly fine, sometimes great story, thereby
ruining it.
During the Block months, it should be instructive to compare
the Scudders as time goes by. My impression (from memory,
without checking) is that they become progressively
fatter.
Best,
mrt
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