Oh, the joy of it all: two links to articles about book formats. Bless my geeky little soul.

You might remember that I’m interested (beyond all reason) in this topic. But don’t click on that link; click on these instead: First, Alex Remington’s piece about The Problem with Pricey Paperbacks, highlighting the lack of inexpensive mass-market editions of literary fiction (yeah! whoo-hoo!); Second, a story by Kevin Sampsell at the AP, in which he describes the things that publishers are doing about expensive hardcovers — including a publisher that’s releasing books in both hard- and softcover simultaneously. (Again, woo-hoo.)

You know, it’s funny. Shortly after I came out against hardcovers, I find myself in a situation where I’m considering them again. Chiefly because I am looking for an out of print book, and it’s the only edition of it I can find.

It’s not that the book wasn’t released in paperback; it’s just that not many of them have made it into the secondary market. So, if it weren’t for the hardcover edition standing up to the abuses of time, I might not be able to get ahold of this book. (I actually have the paperback version of it; but I got it used, and it was not well taken care of. The pitfalls of paper, I guess.)

The thing is, I have other books by this writer in paperback as well. And, though I am taking good care of them, I’m beginning to notice something. This author’s books are not tremendously popular, and can be hard to find sometimes. But I think they’re excellent, and underrated, and deserve to live on. It’s enough to make me want to buy several hardbound copies of her books so that, when I die, they will be flung off like messages in a bottle to the four corners of the Earth, where someone might rediscover them and get them reprinted.

A stupid daydream, I know. But if it were possible at all for something like this to happen, it might be more likely to occur with hardcovers. I like the solution where publishers make both available. Both is good. (And it would get me a copy of Spook Country about a year earlier.)

Links via Lindsayism and Ed.