"Paperbacks" redirects here. For the Canadian band, see The Paperbacks
A blank paperback book Glued binding
A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardback (hardcover) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic.
Inexpensive books bound in paper have existed since at least the 19th century in such forms as pamphlets, yellowbacks, dime novels, and airport novels.[1] Modern paperbacks can be differentiated from one another by size. In the United States, there are "mass-market paperbacks" and larger, more durable "trade paperbacks". In the United Kingdom, there are A-format, B-format, and the largest C-format sizes.[2]
Paperback editions of books are issued when a publisher decides to release a book in a low-cost format. Lower-quality paper, glued (rather than stapled or sewn) bindings, and the lack of a hard cover may contribute to the lower cost of paperbacks. In the early days of modern paperbacks, the 1930s and 1940s, they were sold as a cheaper, less permanent, and more convenient alternative to traditional hardcover books, as the name of the first American paperback publisher, Pocket Books, indicates. In addition, the Pocket Books edition of Wuthering Heights, one of the first ten books it published in 1939, emphasized the impermanence of paperbacks by telling readers if you "enjoyed it so much you may wish to own it in a more permanent edition", they could return the 25 cent book to Pocket Books with an additional 70 cents and it would send them a copy of the 95 cent Modern Library edition "substantially bound in durable cloth."[3]
Since the mid-20th century, paperbacks can also be the preferred medium when a book is not expected to be a major seller and the publisher wishes to release the book without a large investment. Examples include many novels and newer editions or reprintings of older books.
Because paperbacks tend to have smaller profit margins, many publishers try to balance the profit to be made by selling fewer hardcovers against the potential profit to be made by selling more paperbacks with a smaller profit per unit. First editions of many modern books, especially genre fiction, are issued in paperback. Best-selling books, on the other hand, may maintain sales in hardcover for an extended period to reap the greater profits that the hardcovers provide.[citation needed]
History
[
edit
]
Piles of paperback novelsThe early 19th century saw numerous improvements in the printing, publishing and book-distribution processes, with the introduction of steam-powered printing presses, pulp mills, automatic type setting, and a network of railways.[4] These innovations enabled the likes of Simms and McIntyre of Belfast,[5] Routledge & Sons (founded in 1836) and Ward & Lock (founded in 1854) to mass-produce cheap uniform yellowback or paperback editions of existing works, and distribute and sell them across the British Isles, principally via the ubiquitous W. H. Smith & Sons newsagent found at most urban British railway stations. These paper bound volumes were offered for sale at a fraction of the historical cost of a book, and were of a smaller format, 110 mm × 178 mm (4+3⁄8 in × 7 in),[2] aimed at the railway traveller.[6] The Routledge's Railway Library series of paperbacks remained in print until 1898, and offered the traveling public 1,277 unique titles.[7]
The Continental market also supported examples of cheap paper-bound books: Bernhard Tauchnitz started the Collection of British and American Authors in 1841.[8] These inexpensive, paperbound editions, a direct precursor to mass-market paperbacks, eventually ran to over 5,000 volumes. Reclam published Shakespeare in this format from October 1857[9] and went on to pioneer the mass market paperbound Universal-Bibliothek series[10] from 10 November 1867.
20th century—The early years: 1930–1950
[
edit
]
The German publisher Albatross Books revised the 20th-century mass-market paperback format in 1931, but the approach of World War II cut the experiment short. Albatross's innovations included a standardized size, use of new sans-serif fonts, use of logo and type on the cover without an illustration, and color-coding the covers by genre.[11][12]
1936 Penguin book. Color-coded orange and white for general fictionIn 1935, British publisher Allen Lane, investing his own capital, initiated the paperback revolution in the English-language book market by releasing ten reprint titles to launch the Penguin Books imprint. They adopted many of Albatross's innovations, including a conspicuous logo, using only type on the cover, and color-coded covers for different genres.
The first book on Penguin's 1935 list was André Maurois' Ariel.[13]
Lane intended to produce inexpensive books. He purchased paperback rights from publishers, ordered large print runs (such as 20,000 copies—large for the time) to keep unit prices low, and looked to non-traditional book-selling retail locations. Booksellers were initially reluctant to buy his books, but when Woolworths placed a large order, the books sold extremely well. After that initial success, booksellers showed more willingness to stock paperbacks, and the name "Penguin" became closely associated with the word "paperback" in Great Britain.[citation needed]
In the United States, Robert de Graaf created the Pocket Books label in 1939, partnering with Simon & Schuster to issue a similar line of reprints. Because at first Pocket Books was the only publisher of paperbacks, the term "pocket book" became synonymous with paperback in English-speaking North America. (In France, the term livre de poche, which translates as "pocket book", was used and is still in use today.) De Graaf, like Lane, negotiated paperback rights from other publishers, and produced many runs. His practices contrasted with those of Lane by his adoption of illustrated covers aimed at the North American market. To reach an even broader market than Lane, he used distributors of newspapers and magazines to distribute his books because they had a lengthy history of being aimed (in format and distribution) at mass audiences.[14] Pocket Books were not available in book stores because they did not carry magazines.
Pocket Books established the format for all subsequent paperback publishers in the 1940s. The books measured 6.5" by 4.25" (16.5 cm by 10.8 cm), had full-color covers, and cost 25 cents. Eventually in the 1950s the height increased by 0.5" (1.4 cm) to 7" (18 cm). The width remained the same because wire display racks used in many locations could not hold wider books. With the larger size came a higher price, first 35 cents and then 50 cents.
Because of its number-one position in what became a very long list of pocket editions, James Hilton's Lost Horizon is often cited as the first American paperback book. However, the first mass-market, pocket-sized, paperback book printed in the U.S. was an edition of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, produced by Pocket Books as a proof-of-concept in late 1938, and sold in New York City.[15]
The first ten Pocket Book titles published in May 1939 with a print run of about 10,000 copies each were:
This list includes seven novels, the most recent being six year old (Lost Horizons, 1933), two classics (Shakespeare and Wuthering Heights, both out of copyright), one mystery novel, one book of poetry (Enough Rope), and one self-help book.
The success of Pocket Books led to others entering the market. In 1941, American News Company, a magazine distributor, bought a dime novel publisher partially owned by brother and sister Joseph Meyers and Edna Meyers Williams and hired them to organize a new company called "Avon Publications". Avon copied the basic format established by Pocket Books but differentiated itself by emphasizing, as a book on collecting paperbacks says, "popular appeal rather than loftier concepts of literary merit."[17] In 1953, Time magazine summarized its books as "westerns, whodunits, and the kind of boy-meets-girl story that can be illustrated by a ripe cheesecake jacket [cover]".[18]
The next year Dell Publishing, which was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte Jr. to publish pulp magazines, joined with Western Publishing to publish Dell Books. Like Avon, Dell followed the basic format established by Pocket Books. But within that format, "Dell achieved more variety than any of its early competitors [with its] . . . instantly identifiable format of vibrant airbrushed covers for its predominantly genre fiction", specialized logos and special features like maps and lists of characters.
During World War II, the U.S. military distributed some 122 million "Armed Services Editions" paperback novels to the troops. After the war, the former servicemembers' familiarity with paperbacks helped popularize the format.[19]
Two new developments changed the nature of the mass-market paperback business. One was the decision by publishers to publish more recent best selling books than the older books originally published by Pocket Book. They sought reprint rights on new books and soon found themselves in competition for the biggest sellers, leading to bidding against each other for the rights and costing them more money.
The second development was the spinner rack, a metal pole with a four-sided wire frame designed to vertically hold rows of racks of paperback books. Retail store owners no longer had to devote feet of valuable counter space to low-profit paperbacks. Dozens of paperbacks could be displayed vertically in five or six square feet of floor space. (Similar racks were available for magazines and comic books.) By the late 1940s, paperback spinner racks were ubiquitous in large and small towns across the United States, in every local grocery store, drug store, dime store, and bus and train station, displaying everything from best sellers and mysteries and westerns to classics and Shakespeare. In 1955, in William Inge's Broadway play Bus Stop, it did not seem unbelievable that a long-distance bus traveller stranded by a snowstorm in an out-of-the-way cafe walks to a shelf and picks up a paperback copy of Four Tragedies of Shakespeare. "Sometimes one can find Shakespeare on these shelves among the many lurid novels of juvenile delinquents," he comments.[20]
In 1945, Bantam Books was formed by Walter B. Pitkin Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and husband and wife Ian and Betty Ballantine as a mass-market paperback publisher.
The fifth major 1940s publisher of mass-market paperbacks was New American Library. Originally Penguin USA, it became a separate publisher in 1948 as the New American Library of World Literature when it separated from Penguin and Victor Weybright and Kurt Enoch took over. Its original focus was classics and scholarly works as well as popular and pulp fiction. Eventually it shortened its name to New American Library and published books in the Mentor and Signet lines.[21]
New paperback publishers continued to enter the market - Lion Books and Pyramid Books (both 1949), Fawcett Gold Medal Books (1950), Ace Books and Ballantine Books (both 1952), and Berkley Books (1955).
The 1950s—The paperback original (fiction) revolution
[
edit
]
(The term "paperback original" applies to paperback original publications of fiction. It is not usually applied to original non–fiction publications, although paperback publishers also began issuing original non–fiction titles.)
At first, paperbacks consisted entirely of reprints, but in 1950, Fawcett Publications' Gold Medal Books began publishing original fiction in mass–market paperback. It was revolutionary.
Fawcett, an independent newsstand distributor, in 1945, negotiated a contract with New American Library to distribute its Mentor and Signet titles. That contract prohibited Fawcett from becoming a competitor by publishing its own paperback reprints. Roscoe Kent Fawcett wanted to establish a line of Fawcett paperbacks, and he felt original works would not be a violation of the contract. To challenge the contract, Fawcett published two anthologies—The Best of True Magazine and What Today's Woman Should Know About Marriage and Sex—reprinting material from Fawcett magazines not previously published in books.
After these books were successfully published, Fawcett announced in December 1949 that in February 1950 it would publish "original fiction including westerns and mysteries at 25 cents in a pocket-sized format" in a series called Gold Medal Books. Publishers Weekly reported in May 1950 that Fawcett books were "similar in appearance and cover allure to many of the paperback reprints, but the story material [was] original and not reprinted from regular editions." It also said the authors would be paid a $2,000 advance with a guaranteed first printing of 200,000 copies.[22]
That same month Fawcett released the first four Gold Medal books, original novels by W. R. Burnett, Sax Rohmer, Richard Himmel, and John Flagg - one western and three mysteries/adventure novels.
Fawcett's action led to immediate controversy, with an executive Vice president of Pocket Books attacking the whole idea, a literary agent reporting that one hardcover publisher threatened to boycott his agency if he dealt with mass market publishers, and Doubleday's LeBaron R. Barker claiming that paperback originals could "undermine the whole structure of publishing."[23]
Sales soared, prompting Gold Medal editorial director Ralph Daigh to comment later, "In the past six months we have produced 9,020,645 books, and people seem to like them very well." In 1950 Gold Medal published 35 titles, in 1952, 66.[24]
Other paperback publishers saw Gold Medal's success and began to emulate it. Publishers Weekly reported in May 1952 that Avon had included three originals in its April releases and was seeking more. It added that Dell was "'thinking about' some systematic programs of original publishing," Lion Books had "a definite original publishing program in the works", and that Graphic had begun publishing originals about a year earlier. Bantam, Pocket Books, and New American Library said they were not going to publish originals.[23]
Also in 1952, Ace began publishing Ace Double Novel Books, two books printed in one volume for 35 cents, one a reprint and one original, with two covers and two title pages.[23]
In 1952, husband and wife publishers Ian and Betty Ballantine left Bantam Books and founded their own publishing house, Ballantine Books, to publish paperbacks simultaneously with their publication in hardcover by traditional publishers. Their first book, Cameron Hawley's Executive Suite, published January 1, 1952[25] at 35 cents in the 7" height simultaneously with Houghton Mifflin's $3.00 hardcover edition, was a success for both publishers.[26] Of their next nine novels, two were published simultaneously by Houghton Mifflin and one by Farrar, Straus & Young and six were stand-alone originals.
In 1953, Dell announced its line of originals, Dell First Editions, and published its first novels by Walt Grove, Frederic Brown, and Charles Einstein.[23]
Genre categories began to emerge, and mass-market book covers reflected those categories. Mass-market paperbacks influenced slick and pulp magazines. The market for cheap magazines diminished when buyers began to buy cheap books instead. Authors also found themselves abandoning magazines and writing for the paperback market. The leading paperback publishers often hired experienced pulp magazine cover artists, including Rudolph Belarski and Earle K. Bergey, who helped create the look and feel of paperbacks and set an appealing visual standard that continues to this day. Scores of well-known authors were published in paperback, including Arthur Miller and John Steinbeck.
World War II brought both new technology and a wide readership of men and women now in the military or employed as shift workers; paperbacks were cheap, readily available, and easily carried. Furthermore, people found that restrictions on travel gave them time to read more paperbacks. Four-color printing and lamination developed for military maps made the paperback cover eye catching and kept ink from running as people handled the book. A revolving metal rack, designed to display a wide variety of paperbacks in a small space, found its way into drugstores, dimestores, and markets. Soldiers received millions of paperback books in Armed Services Editions.[27]
U.S. paperbacks quickly entered the Canadian market. Canadian mass-market paperback initiatives in the 1940s included White Circle Books, a subsidiary of Collins (UK.); it was fairly successful but was soon outstripped by the success of Harlequin which began in 1949 and, after a few years of publishing undistinguished novels, focused on the romance genre and became one of the world's largest publishers.
McClelland and Stewart entered the Canadian mass-market book trade in the early 1960s, with its "Canadian best seller library" series, at a time when Canadian literary culture was beginning to be popularized, and a call for a Canadian author identity was discussed by the Canadian people.
Types
[
edit
]
The mass-market paperback is a small, usually non-illustrated, inexpensive bookbinding format. This includes the A-format books of 110 mm × 178 mm (4+3⁄8 in × 7 in),[2] in the United Kingdom, and the "pocketbook" format books of a similar size, in the United States. Mass-market paperbacks usually are printed on cheap paper.[28] They are commonly released after the hardback edition and often sold not only at bookstores, but also where books are not the main business, such as at airports, drugstores, and supermarkets.
In 1982, romance novels accounted for at least 25% of all paperback sales.[29] In 2013, 51% of paperback sales were romance.[30] Many titles, especially in genre fiction, have their first editions in paperback and are never published in hardcover; this is particularly true of first novels by new authors.[31]
The mass-market paperbacks sold in airport newsstands have given rise to the vaguely defined literary genre of the "airport novel", bought by travelers to read while they sit and wait. Mass-market paperbacks also have offered collections of comic strips and magazine cartoon series, such as Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy and Chon Day's Brother Sebastian.
The term B-format indicates a medium-sized paperback of 129 mm × 198 mm (5+1⁄8 in × 7+3⁄4 in). This size has been used to distinguish literary novels from genre fiction.[2] In the U.S., books of this size are thought of as smaller trade paperbacks (see below).
Trade paperback
[
edit
]
A trade paperback (also called trade paper edition and trade) is a higher-quality paperback book.[32] If it is a softcover edition of a previous hardcover edition and is published by the same house as the hardcover, the text pages are normally identical with those of the hardcover edition, and the book is almost the same size as the hardcover edition. The pagination is the same, so that references to the text will be unchanged: this is particularly important for reviewers and scholars. The only difference is the soft binding; the paper is usually of higher quality than that of a mass-market paperback, often being acid-free paper.[33] In the United States, the term trade paperback also encompasses the medium-sized paperbacks described as B-format, above. British trade paperbacks are 135 mm × 216 mm (5+3⁄8 in × 8+1⁄2 in).[2]
Trade paperbacks did not enter the American market until around 1960. Unlike mass-market paperbacks they are distributed by their original hard-cover publishers directly to book stores, not through magazine distributors to other retailers.
Trade comics
[
edit
]
Trade paperbacks are often used to reprint several issues of a comic series in one volume, usually an important storyline or the entire series, and the name trade paperback has become synonymous with a collection of reprinted material. Graphic novels may also be printed in trade paperback form. Publishers sometimes release popular collections first in a hardback form, followed by a trade paperback months later. Examples include Marvel Comics' Secret War and DC Comics' Watchmen.
Japanese manga, when they are collected into volumes, are published in the tankōbon format, approximately the size of a trade-sized book. The most common tankōbon sizes are Japanese B6 (128 × 182 mm) and ISO A5 (148 × 210 mm).
Major publishers
[
edit
]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
Further reading
[
edit
]
An aspiring Golden Girl, Nicole Hill is a former journalist and forever writer whose home is equal parts pet rescue and personal library. Nicole lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and growing canine and feline brood. Please send any and all book recs and review copies to nicolemhill032@gmail.com.
“It is, admittedly, all too easy to take the existence of physical books for granted,” writes Keith Houston in The Book . “The sheer weight of them that surrounds us at all times, in bookcases, libraries, and bookshops, leads to a kind of bibliographic snow blindness.”
For that last question, I have no answer. Though that hasn’t stopped others from trying to make sense of all of these mismatched sizes .
You’re reading this article because you love books. I’m writing it for the same reason. But how much do you know about the books themselves? Why are they shaped the way they are ? Why are there so many different book formats? How can you fit all of these different sizes of books on your bookshelf?
Recent news, though, has us thinking more deeply about book formats. In March, Harlequin discreetly made some changes to its mass market paperbacks; it made them bigger, dubbing the new format “mass market paperback max.” And in April, Kensington Publishing announced plans to switch its mass market to titles to the “mass max” size in September 2020.
What does all this mean? What’s a mass market paperback, and how’s it different from any other paperback? Why are books different sizes anyway? Let’s revisit the different types of book formats and why each exists.
Before we go any further, a note on terminology: “Trim size” is publishing industry speak for book size. After a book is bound, it’s trimmed down to one of several uniform sizes—sizes for which, in the United States, you actually have Woodrow Wilson to thank.
As Houston outlines in The Book, a wonderfully thorough history of, well, the book, standard book trim sizes are a relatively modern invention. Standardization didn’t start in the U.S. until 1921, when the Wilson administration established two committees dedicated to defining paper sizes: the Permanent Conference on Printing and the Committee on the Simplification of Paper Sizes.
That pair of granularly named committees is responsible, for example, for our standard letter sizes (8 x 10 ½ inches and 8 ½ x 11 inches). How they arrived at such a definition is telling. The dimensions, Houston writes, were (super scientifically) copied from Secretary of State Herbert Hoover’s personal letter paper.
Regardless, any time I refer to “trim size,” I’m merely referring to the actual size of the book.
What they are: Hardcovers, sometimes referred to as “trade cloth” books, are hardbound books with sewn spines. When you buy them new, they may come with removable dust jackets to protect their covers.
Where you see them: Most new releases arrive in hardback first, followed by a paperback release around a year later.
Likely, you’ll see them in your local library, too. Hardcovers—especially those with reinforced library binding—hold up better over time for multiple borrowers, particularly with popular titles, according to Leah Oswald, a reference librarian with the Austin Public Library. Books with lower expected circulation, meanwhile, often get stocked in cheaper paperback form.
Where you won’t see them: A lot of genre fiction (romance, science fiction, fantasy) dispenses with the hardcover format. Many books from indie presses likewise debut in paperback.
Why they exist: Prior to the hardcover, ancient book formats vacillated between various forms of parchment and papyrus scrolls. While these scrolls and bookrolls became increasingly durable, usability problems remained.
“It takes two hands to simultaneously unfurl a bookroll at one end and roll it up at the other,” Houston writes in The Book. “There is no way to casually prop open a scroll in one hand while sipping from a glass of wine held in the other.”
Hardcovers exist for their durability and relative convenience. Their (typically) rectangular, solid shapes behave nicely on bookshelves! And until World War II, they were really the only trim size available. (More on that in a second.)
Today, publishers still put out hardcovers first for the simple fact that they sell, as Philip Jones, editor of publishing-industry magazine The Bookseller, explained in an interview with The Guardian. Citing data from Nielsen BookScan, Jones said hardcovers compose roughly 20% of the printed fiction market.
Why? Any number of reasons. Readers may prefer hardcovers because they’re more durable than paperbacks. Bookstores may prefer them because they’re larger, more easily visible on bookshelves. Without a doubt, publishers prefer hardcovers because they’re more profitable, often selling for “twice the price of a paperback” without twice the production cost, Jones said.
And as Mental Floss notes, hardcover releases followed up by paperback releases give publishers two big marketing opportunities for any given title—double the chances that book will end up in your hands.
What they are: Trade books are what we consider “standard” paperbacks.
Where you see them: Trade paperbacks (usually measuring somewhere around 5 x 8 inches) are less expensive, more portable book formats. You’ll see trade paperbacks everywhere, for works of adult and children’s fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and poetry alike.
Where you won’t see them: Most books are published in paperback (at some point), but there is the whole oversized books market, which we’ll discuss in a moment.
Why they exist: Paperbacks of any size exist because of their accessibility, affordability, and portable nature. But the mainstreaming of paperbacks in the United States is largely a product of World War II.
Penguin began publishing its cheaper, commuter-friendly paperbacks in Britain in 1935. Pocket Books followed suit in the United States in 1939 with its own lines of books stocked in accessible consumer locations like newsstands. Certainly, there was an audience, which Andrew Liptak documented for Kirkus. In a country still buffeted by the Great Depression, hardbacks were out of economic reach even for the traditional “reading classes.”
And then World War II.
Prior to the 1930s and ‘40s, the American paperback market was the dominion of pulp novels and comics. So-called serious literature was available in costly hardcover forms. But wartime America created a new audience of soldiers hungry for the comforts of home and a distraction, as The Atlantic’s Yoni Appelbaum reports.
In a partnership between publishers and the U.S. military, cheap Armed Services Edition paperbacks were produced on magazine presses and sent to the front lines, as Cara Giaimo writes for Atlas Obscura. Available titles included popular pulp favorites like westerns but also classic and best-selling books previously published only in hardcover—all sold to the Army for just 6 cents a book.
When those soldiers returned home, there was no going back to days without a less expensive, widely available, easily held book format.
What they are: If the hardcover is the Range Rover, the trade paperback is the luxury sedan. The mass market paperback? It’s the 2006 Toyota Corolla you’ll drive until one of you dies. Designed for affordability rather than perceived elegance, mass market paperbacks are typically smaller with tighter typeset.
Where you see them: Romance novels, but also much of adult genre fiction, including science fiction and mystery. (No doubt you’ve seen the vivid fantasy covers of mass market paperbacks at your favorite used bookstore.)
Where you won’t see them: Curiously, the industry segment with a gaping mass market hole is the current YA landscape. You’d think books intended for youth audiences would be printed in the cheaper, more easily maneuverable format, no? At least, you’d think that if you’d spent as much time with mass market Christopher Pike thrillers as a teen as I did.
Why they exist: At 4 x 7 inches, they’re perfect to throw in your bag, though that convenience is also the reason why you’ll find them in used bookstores, their covers tattered from being loved too much.
Dedicated readers of genres like romance get very attached to the hand-feel of mass market paperbacks. They’re easy to hold and easy to stow. That’s why Harlequin and Kensington’s announcements about the “mass max” paperback are such big news. The mass max books will measure an expanded 4.75 x 7 inches. That may not seem like a big increase, but think about the size of your palm in comparison to ¾ of an inch.
In announcing its move, Harlequin cited positive reader feedback about the larger size (and larger fonts), paper quality, and spine design—notably, all hallmarks of a traditional (slightly more expensive) trade paperback.
Time will tell if the mass max will eclipse the smaller mass market paperback or even eat into the number of books published as trade paperbacks.
What they are: Finally, we arrive at coffee table books. These massive hardcovers are most likely what you artfully stack in the living room before guests come over.
Where you see them: Typically, you’ll see oversized art books, photography collections, and cookbooks, as well as nonfiction books that otherwise rely on visuals and imagery. Occasionally, you’ll see graphic novels appear in this format for collected volumes like Saga.
Where you won’t see them: Barring unusual circumstances or unique publisher whims, you’re not going to be lugging home any oversized novels or works of narrative nonfiction.
Why they exist: Oversized books for display have been around for centuries, but David Brower, the first executive director of the Sierra Club, is commonly credited with inventing our modern coffee table book.
In Natural Visions: The Power of Images in American Environmental Reform, author Finis Dunaway explores the reasons behind the Sierra Club’s “Exhibit Format” books, which paired nature photos from the likes of Ansel Adams with text from nature writers.
These “large, heavy books, measuring over 10 inches wide by over a foot long” were part of a coordinated campaign to lobby Congress on wildlife protection bills, Dunaway writes: “Sierra Club artists used the camera to present nature as sacred and sublime; their photographs encouraged audiences to view wilderness as a place where people are visitors who do not remain.”
They were on to something. Nature photography remains a huge subject for these oversized books, though only one of many to take advantage of this visually striking form.
So that’s it. That’s a brief look at the most common trim sizes for books. Are there other book formats? Yes, as evidenced by spiral-bound cookbooks or children’s board books. If you’re interested in learning even more about books as an entity, give these 10 Nonfiction Titles That Will Change the Way You See Books a try.