Paperbacks Trade Up for Impact

Given the high cost of hardcover fiction, which typically hovers around $25, many consumers repeat a seven-word mantra: when will it be out in paperback? This summer, readers won't have to wait for fresh fiction: a number of major publishers are heeding the call for more trade paperback originals. And booksellers like Robert Segedy, buyer at McIntyre's Fine Books and Bookends in Pittsboro, N.C., are eager to pile them up at the front of the store. "If I could get my hands on a good paperback original novel," he told PW, "I'd run with it. I'd stack it up and talk the hell out of it."

One new program, Ballantine's Fiction XYZ, will issue new titles only in the warmer months, while other paperback publishers are planning to release them on a case-by-case basis throughout the year. But don't call it a revolution yet. Despite what may appear to be a proliferation of titles, by most counts there are fewer than 30 trade paperback original novels among the thousands of books that will be released this summer.

Still, there's a growing trend toward putting first fiction and story collections directly into trade paperback, as many traditional barriers to originals have eroded. New authors, only too happy to see their books in print, have fewer reservations about bypassing hardcover publication. Michael Redhill, whose first novel, Martin Sloane (Back Bay), was published last month, said, "I am much less concerned with the book's format than the eagerness of the publisher to do good by it."

Reviewers, too, are more open-minded about reviewing trade paper originals. Although it can be difficult for first fiction to get attention as book review coverage shrinks, books like Martin Sloane and last spring's Booker Prize–finalist Hotel World by Ali Smith (Anchor) have been spotlighted in the New York Times Book Review and major dailies. "Reviewers go by if it's good or not," opined Russell Perrault, v-p and director of publicity for Vintage Books. "When we did Ben Marcus's Notable American Women last season, I can't imagine that it would have gotten more review attention if it had come out from Knopf." Meanwhile, Alisa Kwitney's The Dominant Blonde (Avon, June) was excerpted in Cosmopolitan, while Clare Naylor's Dog Handling (Ballantine, June) was reviewed in both Cosmo and People.

Libraries, which were once the bastion of hardcovers, now prefer trade paper. "Generally, we don't make distinctions in fiction or nonfiction between hardcover and trade paper," said Michele Leber, assistant coordinator of collection management at the Fairfax County Public Library in Fairfax, Va., "and we often prefer trade. If hardcover and trade paper copies of the same book are on the shelf, the library user is more likely to check out the trade paper copy."

Computerized inventory systems have made it harder for booksellers to justify the stack 'em-high system of promotion for hardcovers. But that's not necessarily the case for trade paperback originals. "If [a trade original] sounds like it's any good—and many don't—then I'll face them out and buy them in quantity," said Paul Ingram, buyer at Prairie Light Books in Iowa City, Iowa. "Serious fiction, that's what I'm looking for. There are just so many great novels I end up sending back because they're $25."

A big proponent of paper originals, McIntyre's Segedy said, "They're something I've badgered a number of publishers about. On so many levels, they make so much more sense. Customers are much more likely to buy two or three trade paperbacks than a hardcover. I really feel there's a market there that's being ignored."

Roberta Rubin, owner of the Bookstall at Chestnut Court in Winnetka, Ill., has also observed a shift in customer preference to trade paperbacks. "Trade paper," she said, "is now recognized as almost a hardcover without the hard cover. Book clubs have had something to do with it." Once her highest turnover was in hardcover fiction, but now trade paperback fiction has begun to edge up.

Like publishers who are aggressive with trade paper originals, Barry Rossnick, buyer for the 11-store regional chain Books Inc., in San Francisco, talks about his willingness to take risks when it comes to paperbacks. "We take five or six originals for each store. In hardcover, we'd do twos or threes," he said. "There were some things on the Grove Atlantic fall list in trade paper that we wouldn't have bought at all if they had been in hardcover." For Rossnick, review attention is key, especially in the New York Times Book Review and his local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle. "Everything is so media driven. It would be great if the New York Times did a page of paperback originals in Books in Brief."

"We're all trying to find readers," said senior buyer Rick Simonson, who describes Seattle-based Elliott Bay Book Company as "a strong paperback store," stocking many trade originals from small and university presses. "The whole book group thing is centered around paperbacks," he noted. Although Simonson usually waits until a month after publication before adding trade originals to displays geared to reading groups, they are adopted much faster than if they had come out in hardcover first.

Not all independents are bullish when it comes to paperback originals. Even though two Pulitzer Prize–winning Richards, Ford and Russo, jump-started their careers when they were published in paper original as part of Vintage's Contemporary Series in the mid-1980s, John Evans, owner of Lemuria Bookstore in Jackson, Miss., prefers hardcover. "I've worked real hard for 27 years trying to build the idea of having a library in your home," said Evans. "That's something I've been marketing since 1975, when I got into this business." Similarly, Betsy Burton, owner of the King's English in Salt Lake City, Utah, said, "I loved Ella Minnow Pea and nominated it for Book Sense. I don't know if I would have read it if it came out in paperback."

At both leading corporate retailers—Barnes & Noble and the Borders Book Group—trade paperbacks are an essential part of the product mix and of their Discover and Original Voices programs. "Trade paperbacks have always composed a huge percentage of our sales," said Borders fiction buyer Robert Teicher. "The more literary, the better. A customer is more willing to take the risk for a new author in paperback." Like some of his independent counterparts, he said, "I'm much more aggressive stacking up a trade paperback than a $24 hardcover. I feel placement in the bookstore contributes to the success of a title."

Barnes & Noble fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley observed, "Trade paperback sales are on a par with mass market." Five years ago, Barnes & Noble did best with hard-edged male-oriented paper originals like Irvine Welch's first novel, Trainspotting. "Right now," she said, "the bread and butter is chick lit. You make it pink, and it's going to sell. They should patent that Shopaholic pink." She's also done well with self-published African-American books like Teri Woods's True to the Game, published in 1999 by Wood's own Meow Meow Productions.

It may have started with Helen Fieldings's Bridget Jones's Diary in 1998, but the chick lit category has only gotten stronger since then. Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic (Delta, 2001), has almost 400,000 copies in print after 18 trips back to press. The sequel, Shopaholic Takes Manhattan, is in its eighth printing since February, with more than 230,000 copies in print.

At Ballantine, 28-year-old editor Allison Dickens lobbied for a line of paperback originals specifically geared to her age group. "I and some of the other younger people here wanted to do more books in the Shopaholic vein, because we like to read them," said Dickens. The resulting Fiction XYZ program, which will be an annual summer event, launched in May. The inaugural list ranges from Sherri Krantz's The Autobiography of Vivian (Ballantine, June), based on the popular heroine of the Vivianlives.com Web site, to China Miéville's The Scar (Del Rey, June), sequel to his Arthur C. Clarke Award–winning Perdido Street Station. Given the books' target demographics, the Web plays a key role in XYZ promotions. At fictionxyz.com, readers can enter a special sweepstakes and download an e-book sampler. A full-page ad is planned in the August issue of Marie Claire magazine, which sponsored the Vivian site, and XYZ bookmarks are also available.

Pocket Books and MTV Books joined forces four years ago to publish edgy fiction for the post-YA set, most notably Stephen Chbosky's 1999 novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which has close to 200,000 copies in print. "It's a difficult area to publish into," acknowledged Liate Stehlik, associate publisher at Pocket. Jacob Hoye, director of publishing at MTV, added, "We do three titles a year and have a big rapport with our audience"; he oversees the packaging of the books, which are slightly larger than mass market size. Most of the writers are the same age as their target audience, like 20-something Louisa Luna, author of Crooked (May). In addition to an endcap promotion at Barnes & Noble later this summer for the entire line, and cool bookmarks designed to look like paint swatches, MTV and Pocket are working with record stores to create MTV Books sections.

Last summer, Avon began publishing commercial women's fiction in trade paperback. "They range from romantic to mystery to literary," said Morrow/Avon executive editor Carrie Ferron, who plans to publish about one a month. "We're primarily focusing on originals, but we will do reprints. I would love this program to continue into the future, so we're trying to be very flexible."

Two years ago, NAL introduced the NAL Accent series for women interested in weightier issues—such as aging parents, disintegrating marriages and empty nests— in an accessible trade original format, with bound-in conversation guides. The books, which carry the tagline "fiction for the way we live now," can be described as "Oprah lite," according Liz Perl, v-p and executive director of publicity for the Berkeley Publishing Group and NAL. Counter displays with distinctive risers help NAL with the sell-in; print runs typically exceed the industry standard of 12,000 to 15,000 copies. This summer's releases include Maryanne Stahl's Forgive the Moon (June), about a woman in midlife, and Philadelphia Inquirer journalist Tanya Maria Barrientos's Frontera Street (July), set in the barrio of a small town in West Texas.

After publishing its first trade paper original in 1996—Jennifer Belle's Going Down—NAL's sister company, Riverhead, continues to do them on a case-by-case basis. This summer, the house is getting behind former Random House editorial assistant Adam Davies's The Frog King (Aug.) with an equal measure of marketing dollars and sweat equity. "When I read the manuscript," said the imprint's co-editorial director Julie Grau, "it reminded me of Going Down, which was a huge success. From a publisher's point of view, there's so much energy that the paperback team brings, because there are so few originals that everybody's excited about it." Marketing plans include a galley mailing to editorial assistants, a Book Sense mailing, advertising in Time Out New York's back-to-school issue, an author tour to at least six cities, and danglers, or mobiles, more often associated with promotions for juvenile titles.

For Sourcebooks president and publisher Dominique Raccah, there are two key questions that determine format: "What do you believe about the customer of the book? And what are you trying to achieve for the author?" In the case of Michael Malone's short story collection Red Clay, Blue Cadillac (May), which he produced after a long period writing for the ABC soap One Life to Live, she noted, "We're trying to expand his customer base. Because his books are lengthy, I thought people might impulse-buy a book of short stories with the subtitle Stories of Twelve Southern Women. It's on its third printing, and it's a July/August Book Sense selection."

As for Tiffanie DeBartolo's God-Shaped Hole (May), the decision to publish in paper original came directly from Robert Teicher at Borders and a number of independent booksellers. "The audience is hip and young, and she writes like a dream. So we thought that's the way we should go," said Raccah. Number eight on the Book Sense summer paperback list, God-Shaped Hole has gone back to press three times for an in-print total of 25,000 copies.

When it comes to belle lettres, Houghton Mifflin's Mariner imprint, publisher of both Penelope Fitzgerald's bestselling novel The Blue Flower and Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize–winning short story collection Interpreter of Maladies, is the leader. Now, said Houghton v-p and publisher Janet Silver, "We're expanding the number we do. It really depends on the author and the book itself. Everyone acquires across the board." Most short story collections tend to be published as Mariner Originals, as are books acquired to relaunch a career. In August, Houghton, which publishes The Best American Short Stories, will begin doing the Breadloaf Bakeless Award winners as Mariner Originals; William Gruber's On All Sides Nowhere received the 2001 award for memoir, while Malinda Markham's Ninety-Five Nights of Solitude and Miranda Field's Swallow were the poetry winners.

Scribner Paperback Fiction also began publishing trade originals two years ago, and now does two or three a season. "We want to give them the attention they need—all of the things that go into a successful book: author tours, co-op, reading group guides. Every trade paperback original gets a lot of attention," said Marcia Burch, v-p and director of publicity for trade paperbacks. This summer, the house has two historical trade originals. Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl (June) focuses on the rivalry between Mary and her sister, Anne, for the affections of Henry VIII, while Dora Levy Mossannen's Harem (Aug.) is based loosely on her own family's journey from Iran to Israel, then to the U.S. Starting in 2003, Scribner will increase the number of originals it publishes to five a season. "It's building," said Burch, "but we don't want to compete with ourselves, so we have to be careful of the scheduling."

Another recent newcomer to trade originals, Picador is now publishing about two per season, with plans to do more. "I'm English, and in Europe and England, we've been doing trade originals for a long time," said editorial director Frances Coady, who helped launch the Vintage imprint in the U.K. in 1990. Stressing the importance of supporting originals with the kind of marketing attention that hardcovers usually receive, she explained the format makes the most sense with new writers and younger audiences. That strategy got a strong nod of support from Barnes & Noble's Discover New Writers program, which recently tapped two Picador originals: John Fulton's More Than Enough (Aug.), about Mormon siblings coping with the aftermath of attacks by neighborhood bullies, and Ways of Dying, the first novel by popular new South African writer Zakes Mda (Aug.), whose second novel, Heart of Redness (Aug.), is coming in hardcover from FSG.

Little, Brown's Back Bay paperback imprint is making its first foray into the paperback original format with Redhill's Martin Sloane, a novel inspired by artist Joseph Cornell's glass boxes. Like other publishers, the house was influenced by booksellers to start publishing one or two originals a season. "The fact is," said Terry Adams, v-p and director of trade paperbacks, "we probably got out twice as many copies than if it were a modest midlist hardcover." Back Bay's marketing push for Martin Sloane, which received a starred review in PW and is a Borders Original Voices selection, included sending out ARCs with flaps and reading group guides.

Susan Weinberg, editorial director for both HarperCollins and Perennial, regards trade paperback originals as "another tool in the publisher's workbench. In a very deliberate and thoughtful way, we want to increase our presence. If a hardcover doesn't reach its goals, it can be very difficult to turn it around in paperback." For her, it only makes sense to do really good literary first novels in paper original, like Russell Rowland's first novel set in Montana, In Open Spaces (June), which also received a starred PW review, and Elizabeth Evans's short story collection Suicide's Girlfriend (Aug.).

While there may not be a full-fledged paperback revolution, originals are definitely on the rise. Price and portability matter, whether for hip literature, commercial fiction or literary fiction. "Nobody wants to take a hardcover to the beach or on an airplane," McIntyre's Segedy said. "To me, the most important thing is to get the book in people's hands. The trade format is easier on the eyes and more reasonably priced."