Mass Market Paperback

[*Cerridwen*]

Do any of you buy books that are published Mass market paperback?

I have bought a few lately and was told in the past that they are of poor quality, but the ones I have are really good and they are so cheap the ones I bought here were about £4.00 which is about $6.60

have any of you bought mass market and what did you think?

[Kaija]

I know I have... but honestly, I don't even remember which ones they are! (I have a huge book collection and I'm just now getting them out of storage) I don't remember them being poor quality though.. about average I'd say.

[mudweed]

Any of the ones that are published in the smaller size (the size of most paperbacks you probably see) are technically the mass market paperback. So, of course, most of my sci-fi and fantasy collection is mass market. It depends on the publisher what kind of quality you're going to get in a mass market. Generally, the quality is fine. Trade paperbacks are the other type of paperback... the bigger ones. And while they are usually a bit nicer as far as binding, they're also about twice as expensive.

So, in short, most mass market books are fine. You can usually tell a book that's going to fall apart before you even buy it, just from the way it feels. And that holds true for mass market, trade, or hardback books.

[Jenett]

I'm pretty hard on most mass-market paperbacks (which make up probably half to two-thirds of my reading). It does vary some from publisher (and even then, sometimes I'll have a book from a publishing house that is normally just fine, and it falls to pieces. That's rare, though, and I figure that's just a weirdness in that particular book.)

Where I do notice publisher/book type issues more is in the general layout and paper choice - will it hold up well? Is the type readable? That's pretty easy to tell on a first glance/thumb-through, and it's often a good indication of how well the book will hold up in general.

The one place it is good to be careful is if the book gets very cold - a couple of times I've opened a book that's been sitting in the car in the winter (I live in Minnesota, so we regularly get well below freezing for stretches of time, sometimes stretches below 0 Farenheit). In that case, the glue can freeze and become brittle, and that will make the book easier to damage. Most of the time, though, it's really not a problem. (Even if it's cold, being careful about how wide you open it/ how you set it down usually takes care of the problem.)

[mudweed]

Remind me never to live somewhere it's so cold even the books freeze.

!!!