affordability, ¢25 (the price of each of Pocket Books’ titles) went a lot further in 1939 than it does now but was still a consumer-friendly price point. It was just slightly higher than what our great-great-grandparents would have paid for a gallon of gas and slightly lower than what they’d have paid for a dozen eggs. In 2024, the format’s last year of full national distribution, a new mass-market paperback would set you back three times as much as a dozen eggs or a gallon of gas.

I really can’t justify the price of a new mass market paperback anymore. It’s so much for what an inconvenience they are. The font size, spacing, and margins are all small and cramped, and they get so beat up with transport and use, and they’re thick so they both take up a lot of space on a bookshelf and don’t fit as well in a backpack compared to a slimmer, taller hardcover or trade paperback, both of which tend to be more durable, have larger margins and font sizes and line spacing. It’s legitimately a better reading experience, for free, to pirate ebooks and put it on an old cheap used kobo ereader.

I’ll still buy books but they have to be nicer than mass-market PPBs, and then I prefer used because of course those are way more expensive new.