I feel like writing a thread to explain the trend in print romance publishing toward trade paperback editions. Since I've gone 100% digital myself (hello, changing font size!), I'm irked by the high prices that accompany these books at release, but I get why it's happening. 1/?

The first thing to understand about print publishing is that the rules around "returns" of unsold books are based on format. Way back in the Great Depression, publishers were struggling to get booksellers to buy stock, so they offered a sweetheart deal on MMPB returns. 2/?

MMPB=mass market paperback

So, the deal was that instead of having to return the whole book (which would allow the publisher to return the book to stock and sell to another bookseller), an MMPB could have its cover stripped off and the bookseller only had to return that. 3/?

This deal remains in place to this day. It's why you'll sometimes see a disclaimer inside the book that you shouldn't buy it without the cover (because it means the bookseller cheated and didn't destroy the book, but got credit for it anyway). 4/?

But for trade paper and hardback, the whole book has to be returned for credit. There are a bunch of side-effects of that but the primary one is that if a bookseller returns copies for credit, those books are still available to sold to another bookseller. 5/?

So right there, you can already see that trade is a more advantageous format for the publisher. Booksellers are generally willing to keep trade books on their shelves longer before returning them, too. MMPB has a shelf life of about 4 mos. It's much longer for trade. 6/?

The second thing you have to understand is that print publishers still think of physical books as the primary product they produce. Sure, they can create a digital version, but on a fundamental level, "the book's the thing." Literally. 7/?

But they don't think this way because they're Luddites. They think this way because of WHEN they get to record the sale of a print book vs a digital copy. It's about WHO the actually purchaser is and the volume at which that purchaser operates. 8/?

For print, the "consumer" isn't the reader, it's the bookseller. And they buy in large quantities. All at once. Yes, the publisher has to build in a reserve against returns, but if they ship 10,000 copies of a book to Walmart, they get to record 10k sales less returns TODAY. 9/?

By contrast, digital books have to be sold literally one at a time to the end user. They don't sell a contract to Amazon or B&N to sell X number of copies of Y book and then Amazon/B&N has to buy more. It's all on demand. 10/?

This creates an incentive for the publisher to do two things. The first is to get booksellers to order as many copies as possible of the print book. The second is to set the price of the digital book high enough that it won't cannibalize sales of the print edition. 11/?

Those of us who've gone to digital because we PREFER it may not be willing to pay that high price for the digital copy, but that is FINE with the publisher. They want those print books to sell FIRST. That's their bread and butter. 12/?

If a lot of people are willing to pay the high price for the digital book, great. But one way or the other, the digital edition becomes the long tail. It's heavily discounted after the print edition has mostly sold through and us digital folks snap it up. 13/?

Maybe as a result of that discount, the book's sales go up so high that the book hits a list. GREAT! Now the author has letters for their next book. 14/?

But Jackie, you say, if the publisher made the book cheaper in digital when it released, it might hit a list when it comes out. Wouldn't that be better for the author and the publisher? 15/?

And the answer is, maybe it would be better for the author, but not necessarily for the publisher. If the digital price is so low that people who accept either format buy the ebook instead, that's going to affect the sale of the primary product (print book). 16/?

So all of this is a long way of saying that trade paper editions of romance are here to stay and are probably going to become even more common. Publishers are not making a mistake. The pricing strategy, including discounting e-, is by design. /fin