Sales of mass market paperbacks have steadily declined in recent years, to the point where they accounted for only about 3% of units sold at retailers that report to Circana BookScan in 2024. The format will take another big blow at the end of 2025, when Readerlink will stop distributing mass market paperbacks to its accounts. Readerlink’s customers, which include Walmart, Kroger, Hudson News, and other mass merchandisers, account for as much as 60–70% of mass market paperback sales in the U.S.
Executives at Readerlink had no comment on the decision other than to confirm that the company will stop distributing books in the format at the end of the year. With the format’s low price point and thin margins, the popularity of mass market paperbacks had been declining among retailers and publishers. Sales have also suffered as readers turned to e-books in such genres as mystery and romance, long the backbone of the format. According to BookScan, mass market paperback sales fell 19.3% in 2024, to roughly 21 million units sold.
Sources said Readerlink and publishers tried to find a way to make the format more attractive to retailers but could not find a solution. One approach taken by Readerlink, sources said, was to move from a traditional model, where books are paid for up front by retailers, to a scanning-based model through which publishers would only be paid after after a sale to a customer. That switch, which would upend longstanding publisher-retailer practices, was a no-go for publishers.
Mass market paperbacks are published by relatively few publishers, and those contacted by PW said they were still developing strategies to cope with what all those involved with the format agreed was “a big deal” for the future of the format. The head of one Big Five publisher, speaking with PW on condition of anonymity, said that the house was still looking for ways to “mitigate” the loss of the mass merchandise channel for the format.
One publisher noted that the decline in availability of the format comes at a bad time, since its low price point is especially attractive at a time when many consumers are watching their spending. Steve Zacharius, CEO of Kensington Publishing, suggested that one consolation for the industry is that a drop in the number of mass market paperbacks printed will be good for the environment, since retailers are able to return the books after stripping them of their covers and pulping them.
Zacharius said that Kensington—one of the few independent publishers that continues to publish mass market paperbacks—will continue to release books in the format in such niche areas as cozy mysteries, which do well at Barnes & Noble and Amazon, but will stop publishing them in such areas as romance and thrillers, where the bulk of sales were through Readerlink accounts. He added that the publisher will move some books that would have appeared first in mass market to trade paperback and, in other cases, to hardcover.
