The Place and Future of Paperbacks

Paperbacks, which occupy a large corner of the book trade, are overlorded by a competitive oligopoly, although smaller publishing houses also use the format. The format’s success is due to minimisation of publishing risk and perfected sales techniques. The sub-sector’s vitality exerts an influence on the industry in general and more particularly on publishing policies. The form’s outline is hard to define since it has expanded so much, but its further growth as a tightly-strung economic model is threatened by rising costs and the possibility that some of its territory may be annexed by computers.