Francesca:
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Welcome to Reading Under the covers a romance novel podcast,
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where we chat fangirl and maybe
even swoon over our latest reads.
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I'm Francesca from under the covers
book blog, and today we are talking
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about something that's honestly
hitting a little too close to
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home for me as a lifelong reader.
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This is one of those episodes
that's going to be part love letter,
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part rant, and part reality check.
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Because we are saying goodbye to
something that has shaped not just how
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we read romance, but how we fell in
love with the genre in the first place.
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And that is the mass market paperback.
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Yep.
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Those chunky little books that
you could just pick up for a
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few bucks at the grocery store.
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The ones that had the clinch covers,
the step backs, sometimes chapter
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breaks, and they always tempt you
to peek ahead when the tension got
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a little too good in the story.
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Now these are the ones that
introduced many of us to Dukes and
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Pirates and cowboys, Highlanders,
even vampires and shifters, all the
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bad boys with the heart of gold.
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They are now being phased out
and honestly, it feels like
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the end of an era for me.
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So in this episode, we're going
to walk down memory lane through
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the history of the mass market
paperback and its deep roots in
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genre fiction, especially romance.
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And we'll look at how things started
shifting with the rom-com boom of
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the 2010s and how now even historical
romance is moving to a new format.
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But we're also going to talk about
who this shift leaves behind, because
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as romance readers, we read a lot.
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And switching to more expensive
formats is not just a small change.
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It will actually be a big deal.
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So if you've ever cramped a few mass
market paperbacks in your beach bag,
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lined them up like trophies on your shelf,
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or felt your pulse quicken
with a beautiful step back.
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This one is for you, so let's get into it.
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So before we get too deep into our
feels with this, let's just rewind
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for a second and talk about what
the mass market paperback even is
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and why it was such a game changer.
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Now, mass market paperbacks first
showed up in the United States
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around the 1930s and 1940s.
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They were small, affordable, they
were printed on cheaper paper.
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The kind that turns that soft
brownish shade, if you leave
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it out too long in the sun.
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The idea was just simple.
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Take literature, genre fiction, pulpy
stories, and make them something
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that you could literally throw in
your bag and read them anywhere.
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You didn't need a fancy bookstore.
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These were just sold in drugstore,
airports, gas stations, and
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that kind of accessibility.
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That's what made the format revolutionary.
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It opened the door for everyday
reading for people who weren't
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necessarily browsing the literary
fiction section at an indie bookstore.
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And it wasn't just romance, it was also
westerns and thrillers, sci-fi, horror.
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If it was plot heavy and bingeable,
it probably thrived in the
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mass market paperback format.
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And most importantly, for women
especially, it made reading
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feel both private and public.
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You could take your book on the bus,
on your lunch break, on vacation,
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and that compact size meant it was
easy to hold in one hand and you
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could still devour them in a day.
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So once mass market paperbacks were
everywhere, it didn't take long for
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one genre to completely take over.
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And that was romance.
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Romance thrived in the mass
market paperback format.
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We're talking entire bookstore sections,
spinning racks in every grocery store,
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aisles at Walmart just overflowing
with the Dukes and the Pirates,
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and the Cowboys, and the vampires.
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If you grew up reading in the
s, or even the early:
2000
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I can pretty much guarantee that your
first romance was a mass market paperback.
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Let me ask you, did you ever sneak a
romance book off of someone's nightstand?
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Maybe it was your mom's and older cousins?
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One of those books.
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You definitely weren't supposed to be
reading at that age, but you did anyway?
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Because it was also priced accordingly.
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And conveniently, because oftentimes
they were right next to the checkout.
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Now, you didn't need to be rich.
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You didn't need a Kindle.
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Of course, at those times,
they didn't exist yet.
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You didn't need to go to a bookstore.
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You just needed the curiosity
and a few crumpled bills.
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Now for the publishers, this was a
goldmine at the time, and authors
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like Nora Roberts, Johanna Lindsey,
Julie Garwood, Lisa Kleypas, Beverly
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Jenkins, all of them built empires
on the mass market paperback sales.
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These books were just
everywhere, and they came fast.
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There were monthly releases,
sometimes even more than that, and
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readers could just binge a whole
series, collect them like candy,
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and build little libraries at home.
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It was also a format that
worked perfectly for the kinds
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of stories that romance tells.
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They're emotional, escapists
and character driven.
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They are meant to be consumed in
one or two sittings, like a box
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of chocolates that you definitely
didn't mean to finish all at once.
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And the art in them was stunning.
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Oh my God.
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Of course, the clinch covers, but
the step backs, the foil lettering.
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There's an entire visual culture
around historical romance in
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particular that only existed because
of the mass market paperback.
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You knew what you were getting just from
the cover, and that was part of the fun.
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and I don't know if this is just me, but I
feel like there was this status of having
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the full run of an author's backlist,
especially when all of the spines matched
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in this beautiful rainbow of jewel tones.
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Just beautiful, adorable.
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So yeah, mass market wasn't just a
format, it was the format for romance.
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It really shaped not just how we read,
but how we loved the genre as well.
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But like with everything else
in publishing, things change.
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Mass market paperbacks started to
decline in the:
2020
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of course, with fewer titles coming out,
smaller print runs, less shelf space in
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stores, and then it all at once dropped.
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By 2024, mass Market paperbacks made up
just 3% of all book sales and Readerlink,
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which distributes the bulk of the mass
market paperbacks to places like Walmart,
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Kroger's, and airports announced that
re done with the format after:
2025
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And publishers, they are
not fighting to save it.
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Why?
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There's probably a few reasons.
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Mass market paperbacks
have razor thin margins.
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The books are cheap.
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The paper's cheap, and if they don't
sell, they get stripped and returned.
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That's a lot of waste, a lot of loss,
and not a lot of profit, especially when
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paper and shipping costs keep going up.
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But also, publishers
have a new buyer in mind,
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which in my opinion is the booktok buyer.
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So what we're seeing now, especially in
traditional publishing, is a full shift
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to trade paperbacks as the new standard.
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Historical romance, which used to be
almost exclusively mass market paperback.
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Now it's being published in trade.
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Even authors who built their careers on
mass market are seeing their new releases
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come out in a larger pricier format, and
that's a big deal because while trade
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paperbacks might be better for Instagram,
they're not always better for readers.
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Especially when it comes to romance
readers, because let's be honest, we
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don't just read a book or two a month.
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We read five or 10 or 15, and
if every book is now 16.99
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instead of 7.99,
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then that's gonna add up fast.
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So here's the part I think
we really need to talk about.
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This isn't just a
conversation about book sizes.
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It's about access and about who
gets to be part of the romance
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reading community moving forward.
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Now, romance readers are
not like other readers.
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I think most of us read a lot,
so we are what the industry
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would call power readers.
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When a book that used to be 7.99
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becomes 17.99,
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that's not just a couple of extra bucks.
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That's going to be the difference
between reading five books a month
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or maybe just being able to read one.
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And who does that leave out?
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A lot of younger readers who are
just starting to explore the genre.
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Students who are on a budget,
disabled readers on fixed incomes.
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International readers who already deal
with higher prices and limited access.
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And honestly, just regular people that are
trying to read more without blowing their
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entire paycheck on an author's backlist.
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We already know that romance doesn't
get the same respect or critical
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attention as other genres do.
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And now the one format that made it truly
accessible, the one that met people where
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they were, is being phased out in favor
of something that's more curated, more
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aesthetic, and to be real, more expensive.
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It's not just romance that's affected, of
course, specifically some of the romance
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sub genres, they thrive on a series on
binge reading and on big character casts.
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They were all built on
the mass market model.
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So now they're getting squeezed out
of the shelves and out of sight.
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It's hard not to feel like the readers
who made these genres thrive are being
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asked to either spend more or read less.
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And that sucks because romance
has always been a genre of
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comfort and joy, of escape.
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Basically saying that you deserve to
fall in love again and again without
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worrying if your budget can handle it.
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So let's talk about how we got here.
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How we went from mass market being
the format for romance to trade
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paperbacks dominating the shelves.
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I think it started quietly
in around the mid:
2010
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Romance was having a bit of a makeover.
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The romcom was back, it was flirty, fun,
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think like The Hating Game,
The Kiss Quotient, The Wedding
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Date, Red, White and Royal Blue,
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and with those books came a
new kind of cover as well.
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They had bold fonts, flat illustration,
just sometimes silhouettes,
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pastel backgrounds, and sometimes
a cute dog or some baked goods.
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It was romance, but
very Instagram friendly.
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And in fact I had recently a chat with
Erin from Berkley Romance, and we did
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talk about the romcom renaissance and
the book as object, which is what shifted
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the conversation around the covers and
how a lot of these things are marketed.
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I will leave that link down in the
comments if you wanna check it out.
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But guess what?
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All of these changes actually worked.
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These books were flying off the shelves,
especially in places like Target and
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Costco and a lot of indie bookstores that
had never really stocked romance before.
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So the publishers saw these
sales and they just doubled down.
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Suddenly, even authors who used
to write steamy contemporaries or
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some emotional books, they were
being rebranded with illustrated
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covers and lots of quirky titles.
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But here's the thing, those books were
not being published in Mass Market.
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They were coming out in trade
paperback, that larger and more
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expensive size that we talked about.
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And that was the beginning of the shift.
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Then BookTok entered the chat,
and romance exploded on TikTok.
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But because most of the TikTokers
were just blowing up the same kind
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of books, they were either those
pretty trade paperback covers that
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you could find at Target, Barnes and
Noble on all the bestsellers list,
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or they were indie romances as well.
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But all of those were often
trade paperback, and the
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publishers took notice of that.
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So BookTok essentially became
the new gatekeeper of what
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was seen, hyped and shelved.
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And once a few of those trade
paperback romances went viral,
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that format became the blueprint.
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Even historicals now, which
traditionally lived in mass market
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paperback, they started getting trade
reprints with updated book covers.
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All of it so it better
fit the BookTok aesthetic.
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And now don't get me wrong, I love that
BookTok brought new readers into romance.
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I love that it made books go
viral and gave self-published
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authors huge platforms.
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But it also set a new visual and
pricing standard that doesn't work for
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everyone, and it makes you wonder if
a book doesn't look TikTok pretty or
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how we used to say Bookstagram pretty,
does it get shelf space or attention?
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It's one of those moments where
the genre reinvented itself,
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but there was a cost to it.
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So now let's talk about the fallout,
because not every corner of romance is
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going to be hit the same, in my opinion,
by the death of the mass market paperback.
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Some sub genres are built for binging.
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They thrive on long running
series, on high volume reading,
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and on a tight reader author bond.
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And those are the ones that
are going to feel this shift
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the hardest, in my opinion.
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At the top of the list, of
course, is historical romance.
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Now this sub genre lives in mass market
and for decades it was the format.
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Nearly every Avon, Berkley, and
Zebra historical romance was 7.99
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mass market paperback.
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And that made sense because readers
were devouring entire family
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sagas and interconnected series.
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So you could buy six books for under
50 bucks and read for a whole month.
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Now we're seeing more and more
historicals that are released
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exclusively in trade paperback.
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They're pretty, yes, they're beautiful.
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They're also bulkier.
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They're more expensive and they're often
not shelved with romance because I,
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in fact, was watching a video recently
about someone making a case for how
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much she loves historical romance and
how it's not getting published as much
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and contracts are not being renewed
for very popular authors, but she kept
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calling the genre historical fiction.
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And historical fiction is a separate
genre, so a lot of times these things are
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even getting shelved in the wrong place,
which makes them even harder to find.
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There's also fewer new authors that
are being picked up in historical
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romance and without that low risk
model of the mass market, paperback
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publishers are just gonna play it safe.
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Which means there will be less
variety, less diversity, and fewer
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chances being taken on debut voices.
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Another one that's hurting
is romantic suspense.
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Now this subgenre had a long
history with Harlequin intrigue, St.
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Martin's Press, Kensington all mass
market, paperback heavy hitters.
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These books are very fast paced.
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They're often part of interconnected
police, military spy series, and they are
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meant to be consumed in order and quickly.
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But without that mass market format,
these stories are pretty much
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vanishing from the shelves, or they're
just being priced out entirely.
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Some of these are shifting to digital
only, which is fine for some readers,
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but for those who prefer a physical
book, it's going to be a loss.
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Then there's Paranormal Romance and Urban
Fantasy, which had a huge run in the
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2000s, like the Black Dagger Brotherhood,
Psy-Changeling, Mercy Thompson, Anita
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Blake, all started out as mass market
and all deeply Bingeable books.
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Many of the big series are still
running, but the new voices, they're
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not being picked up as easily in print.
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Or they're being published
as trade paperback.
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So I feel that ecosystem that's going
to allow readers to discover their
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new favorite vamps and shifters and
demons isn't going to be there anymore.
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And outside of romance, I
feel cozy mystery is going to
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face the same big struggle.
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Now, this genre has always been
mass market paperback heavy.
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Think of your cat detectives, your baker
sleuth, your small town libraries, all
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solving crimes with their knitting group.
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All of that is mass market.
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And now with ReaderLink pulling
out, a lot of these series are
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being discontinued altogether.
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Not because they're not good, but
because they're no longer profitable
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in the format that made them work.
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Now, trade doesn't always
make sense for these genres.
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The margins are better for publishers,
sure, but the reading habits, the needs of
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the reader are not always going to align.
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And to me, that's just
the heartbreak of it All.
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The formats that are being prioritized now
don't always fit the stories that we love.
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So where does that leave us?
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Mass market paperbacks are
going to be fading out.
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It's not gonna happen overnight,
but by the end of:
2025
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looking at a pretty clear sunset.
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ReaderLink is pulling out.
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The publishers are shifting
priorities and the format that
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built romance as we know it.
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Is becoming a collector's item.
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To me that is bittersweet because on
one hand, romance isn't going anywhere.
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The readers are still reading.
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We are still discovering new
favorites, however that happens to be.
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But for a lot of readers and authors, the
format will change everything for them.
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If you were raised on mass market,
this feels, I think, like losing
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muscle memory of how you read
because that perfect one-handed hold,
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that crack of the spine that some
people love and some people hate.
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Those pages that are turning sometimes
faster than you meant them to, but it's
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00:15:31
also about access and what kind of stories
get told and who gets to read them.
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So what do we do?
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00:15:37
We have to adapt because romance
readers always do and maybe
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00:15:42
lean into digital when we can.
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00:15:44
eBooks and audiobooks are now
more accessible than ever.
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Kindle Unlimited has become a powerhouse
for indie romance and we have to
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support indie bookstores that are still
carrying mass market while they can.
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After that, basically haunt the used
bookstores and library sales and
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keep that stepback legacy alive.
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All we can do is keep showing up,
keep reading, and keep recommending.
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Because here's the thing, romance
isn't defined by a format.
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It's defined by a feeling and that at
the end of the day is not going anywhere.
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So that is it for today's episode.
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A little bit of publishing
tea, a little nostalgia,
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and a whole lot of love for
the books that made us readers.
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If you have a favorite mass market
memory, whether that is a book, a
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series, a specific edition that you still
treasure, I would love to hear about it.
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So come hang out, whether that
is over on the blog, on substack,
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on Instagram, on YouTube.
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Let me know what those are,
and if you like this episode,
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:
00:16:39
consider leaving a review and
sharing it with your book bestie.
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:
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Especially that one who is still hoarding
those precious old school Lisa Kleypas
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like it's gold because honestly they are.
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Don't forget to find us on the blog
at under the covers book blog.com.
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And if you're tuning in from YouTube,
don't forget to like this video.
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:
00:16:55
Subscribe to the channel and hit
that bell notification so you
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:
00:16:58
don't miss any videos from us.
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And subscribe for free to our substack
so you don't miss any content that
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00:17:03
we post across all of our platforms.
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But for today, that is all I have for you
guys, and I will see you in the next one.
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Bye.
