Cover story: hardbacks have their uses

Blogger Nicholas Clee writing in The Guardian
November 12, 2007

It seems hasty to announce the imminent death of the hardback literary novel on the evidence of one experimental policy by one London publisher. But Picador's decision to bring out most of its new fiction in paperback editions, accompanied by only a small number of "collectors'" hardbacks, is a symptom of the dire health of what has been a surprisingly persistent format. While we may think of the hardback, usually appearing some 12 months before the edition that most people consider affordable, as elitist and uncommercial, there are nevertheless reasons to worry about its passing.

Picador plans to publish most of its titles as "B format" paperbacks - of the kind used for paperback editions of novels by the likes of Ian McEwan and Anne Enright. The firm's publisher Andrew Kidd told The Bookseller: "We want to help well-reviewed authors get straight to their readers." At the same time, Picador's novels will also appear in limited hardback print runs, produced for the people who prefer to acquire books with cloth covers, boards, endpapers and so on, and who don't mind paying for those luxuries.

Such people, though, are few in number. So why have publishers persisted for so long in bringing out hardback novels, pushing for reviews and interviews with the authors, and waiting until everyone has forgotten about the publicity before issuing the affordable editions? Until 20 years ago, libraries and book clubs provided one reason, because they ordered hardbacks in decent quantities; but these quantities have dwindled to negligibility. Another reason was that literary editors thought that only hardbacks deserved reviews; there is better coverage for paperbacks on the books pages now, although it could improve further. The third was that authors felt hardback editions gave them prestige. Picador may find that this attitude endures.

Until now, a small market has just about upheld the other arguments for literary fiction in hardback. But that market has almost reached vanishing point. The paucity of sales of novels even by acclaimed authors was an awkward book industry secret until this summer, when it was broadcast that eight of the novels on the longlist for the Man Booker Prize had sold fewer than 1,000 copies. The exception, however, was Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, which had sold more than 100 times that number. It is thanks to novelists such as he that the hardback will not disappear entirely; it will carry on generating a substantial income for elite authors, Picador's Alice Sebold and Helen Fielding among them.

The rest are likely to have to go straight to the mass market in search of an audience, and that may not be easy. Publishers of hardbacks can print 1,500 copies, hope for reviews and - for a lucky few - awards. The authors' careers build from there. If they dispense with hardbacks, they will have to put out larger print runs of paperbacks to justify publication; and they will find that the market is often resistant to new fiction, at any price.

As a result, they will only take on authors whom they believe can sell the paperback print runs - a surefire recipe for conservative commissioning. The gap between the McEwans and the rest will grow. A policy that appears at first glance to be anti-elitist may turn out to have just the opposite effect.