Publishers Weekly’s Last Call for Mass Market Paperbacks didn’t surprise me terribly — until I saw the timeline:
The format credited with making books more accessible via low prices and widespread availability will all but vanish from the publishing scene in a few weeks.
The decision made this winter by ReaderLink to stop distributing mass market paperback books at the end of 2025 was the latest blow to a format that has seen its popularity decline for years. According to Circana BookScan, mass market unit sales plunged from 131 million in 2004 to 21 million in 2024, a drop of about 84%, and sales this year through October were about 15 million units. But for many years, the mass market paperback was “the most popular reading format,” notes Stuart Applebaum, former Penguin Random House EVP of corporate communications. Applebaum was also once a publicist at Bantam Books, one of the publishers credited with turning mass market paperbacks into what he calls “a well-respected format.”
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According to Book Industry Study Group’s Book Industry Trends 1980, mass market paperback sales jumped from $656.5 million in 1975 to nearly $811 million in 1979, easily outselling hardcovers, which had sales of $676.5 million, and the new, upcoming format, trade paperback, which had sales of about $227 million. And with its much lower price points, mass market paperback unit sales easily dwarfed those of the other two formats, at 387 million in 1979, compared to 82 million for hardcover and about 59 million for trade paperback.
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Jacqueline Susann’s megahit Valley of the Dolls sold 300,000 hardcovers in 1966, while the Bantam paperback sold four million in its first week on sale in 1967, and more than eight million in its first year, Margolis notes. One of the biggest mass market bestsellers of all time was the 1975 tie-in edition to the movie Jaws. According to Applebaum, the edition, whose cover art closely resembled the movie poster, sold 11 million copies in its first six months.
While hardcover reprints were a staple for mass market paperback publishers, some also released mass market originals. One author who thrived using that strategy was the western writer Louis L’Amour. Applebaum, who served as L’Amour’s publicist, says that Bantam has more than 150 million copies of his books in mass market print, and all but four of his more than 130 titles were paperback originals.
Mass market paperback was also the format of choice for publishing instant books. Bantam published its first instant book in 1964 when it released The Report of the Warren Commission in the format.
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A 1988 article in PW pointed to the vibrancy of the format at that time. The year before, 112 mass market titles sold more than one million copies, led by Danielle Steel, whose Family Album, Wanderlust, and Secrets combined to sell almost 12 million copies. Trailing Steel on the PW mass market list for that year was Sidney Sheldon, with Windmill of the Gods and If Tomorrow Comes combining to sell 8.6 million copies. Other authors whose mass market paperbacks racked up more than one million copies in 1987 included such well-known writers as Stephen King and Judith Krantz.
Though mass market paperback sales were over $1 billion in 1996, there were warning signs that interest in the format was cooling. According to BISG, mass market sales fell 3.3% in 1996 compared to the previous year, to $1.35 billion, and unit sales dropped 6.2%.
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According to the 2012 StatShot report (produced that year by AAP and BISG), mass market paperback sales were running neck and neck with e-book sales in 2011 at about $1.1 billion, but the two formats were on markedly different trajectories: from the prior year, mass market paperback sales tumbled by about $500 million and e-book sale soared by roughly $1 billion.