I had seen the signs. I knew things were changing. But now that I've seen it confirmed, I feel like I've lost an old friend.
The mass market paperback is dead.
Cheap, lightweight, and so common we thought they'd be around forever, the just under 4.25" by 7" standard paperback on cheap paper is going the way of all things historical. Sure, trade paperbacks will still exist, twice the size and mostly on better paper, but damn . . . I cut my teeth on the mass market paperback. My Sherlockian teeth.
Every Sherlock Holmes pastiche stocked by my junior college bookstore -- Farmer, Wellman, Boyer, Mitchelson & Utechin, and, of course, Meyer -- were gobbled up like M&Ms in my early days as a Sherlockian.
Paperbacks were where I met Solar Pons and Vincent Starrett, and I can remember the exact location where I found each, a Walden Books and a Walgreens, in two different local malls.
The reasons for the demise of the mass market paperback are many, all of them eating away at the sales numbers that made them mass market. Reading books on screens for one, but also that larger cultural shift we've seen since the internet started giving us near-unlimited options for entertainment: We're not all reading the same things any more. More writers are being published than ever before. A simple trip to Barnes & Noble can be a mind-boggling experience at the array of choices. Where Nicholas Meyer's Sherlockian pastichery was plentiful in the days of paperback bestsellers, his latest was just one among many Sherlockian works in today's trip to Barnes and Noble.
Books still exist, yes, and so do readers. And when you reach a certain age, for better or worse, you get to watch as previous eras slip through your fingers and fade. Moments of grief are natural. But then we turn back to the current world as it exists right now and get on with enjoying the people and things that are still with us, and plan for the days ahead.
But for today . . . alas, poor paperbacks. I knew them, Horatio . . .
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