Bye, Bye Mass Market Paperbacks... You Were My Constant Companion for Many Years...

It's true... Mass Market Paperbacks are going the way of the dinosaur in 2026. Readerlink, which is the largest book distributor in the North America, decided to stop distributing mass market paperbacks at the end of 2025. It's the end of an era...

I remember always bringing a paperback with me to the beach, even as a teenager. I remember reading The Shining in a mass market paperback, and The Exorcist too. I remember reading Summer Sisters by Judy Blume and my first romance book, The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy. I bought a used copy of The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher (which is in the photo I took along side a trade paperback book just to compare the sizes). Mass Market paperbacks were easy to carry around, fit in my pocketbook, and they were a lot cheaper than hardcovers. 

(BTW... One thing I noticed with my "old" copy of The Shell Seekers is that the pages are starting to yellow around the edges. This is pretty common on mass market paperbacks because they were made with cheaper paper. Nowadays Trade Paperbacks are generally made with a better quality paper, some of which is acid free paper, so we won't be seeing that yellowing.)

I should have seen it coming... And I accidentally helped the downfall when those trade paperbacks made their first appearance on the bookstore shelves. I was hesitant at first, but then came to like the larger format. A lot of people started liking the larger format. And honestly, I don't remember the books I wanted to read coming in mass market paperback size after trade paperbacks became popular. 

"According to Circana BookScan, mass market unit sales plunged from 131 million in 2004 to 21 million in 2024, a drop of about 84%, and sales this year through October were about 15 million units."... Publishers Weekly News

Trade Paperbacks weren't the only villain in the Mass Market Paperback decline... eBooks came into the picture and took away more of the market. 

Speaking of eBooks... I looked back on some of my eReader news posts over the years and found my first post about the new on the market Kobo eReader in May 2010. And the first Nook eReader I covered in October of 2009. And a fun post about "Are eReaders taking Over the World" Sept. 2010.

What do you think about the downfall of mass market paperbacks? Do you like the size? One thing I can tell you is that as an "older" person now, that larger font in a eReader is a life saver...

Happy Reading... Suzanne