Is This The End Of Mass Market Paperback Books?

As I was scrolling through my Instagram feed last weekend, a video from nytbooks caught my attention. And as she introduced 3 different types of books – hard cover, paperback and mass market, she just said “And I have bad news for you, mass market paperback are going extinct.” 

Excellent work Reporter Harris. Not only did you win my attention with your 3-minute video, but also sent me down a rabbit hole of exploring how true this is. Sorry Reporter Harris, it’s not that I didn’t trust you. It’s just in my nature to fact check everything I see. You know how it is these days. It was already hard to identify what was true on the internet, now you add AI to the mix, phew. Tough times.

I digress. Anyway, yes – the rabbit hole. I managed to find quite a fair bit of conversation revolving around it, especially on Reddit. ReaderLink, the largest full-service distributor of books to retailers across North America, has officially stopped distributing mass market paperbacks as of the end of 2025. And when I say retailers, I mean the big ones. Walmart. Costco. Hudson News at your airport. That’s 60 to 70 percent of all MMPB sales in the US, gone, just like that.

I have to admit, I am disappointed. But I also understand it. I mean, come on. The more technology advances, the more things we have to occupy our time. I, too, am guilty of that. 

Going Down Memory Lane Of Reading Books On Buses And Trains

I used to be an avid reader. That’s why Ms. Harris’s post caught my attention. Most of the books I read were mass market paperbacks (MMPB). I mean, it’s not as cheap as it is in America. In Malaysia a MMPB would cost around RM30 – RM50, if I recall correctly.  Unless you would buy it from events like The Big Bad Wolf, then it would be like RM5 or RM10 per book. And if you’re lucky, you can snatch some for RM1.

I love MMPBs not only because they were small and affordable, but because they had that iconic smell, especially when they’ve aged. They were my companion as I went on bus and LRT rides all around the Klang Valley in my 20s – during the 2010 decade. At the time, I still didn’t own a smartphone. I only bought one towards the end of the decade. And it was during the 2020s that my interest in reading books lessened. That’s how much difference owning a smartphone could make. I knew it, that’s why I didn’t get one. But if I didn’t adapt, I would’ve been left behind – and I wouldn’t have stumbled upon the video of Reporter Harris and wrote this article. 

Books Are Not Going Extinct Anytime Soon

The advancement of technology does mean there are less book enjoyers out there. Even since television was first introduced to the mass population, you started to see a decline in book readers. It doesn’t mean that books have lost their value, it just means people have a variety of options to choose from when it comes to entertaining themselves. On the contrary, there’s a little corner in TikTok called BookTok, where creators are sharing their love for books.

They are stopping the production of MMPBs simply because there has not been that much demand for it. If you’re thinking, “oh it must be because of e-books,” think again. Because that was my initial thought as well. In fact 75% of book sales have been for Paperback and Hard Cover. E-books only cover 6%. 

So what actually brought about the demise of the MMPB? The data tells a brutal story: sales plummeted from 131 million copies in 2004 to just 21 million in 2024. An 84% drop. The format wasn’t killed by digital. It was quietly replaced by readers who could now afford the nicer version – the trade paperback that comes with better paper which won’t yellow after a few years.

So don’t worry, there is still hope in humanity. Even if you’ve heard about the big conglomerate that just closed their campus library last month, people still enjoy reading, but just not through MMPB. 

Does This Mean Mass Media PaperBack Will Become A Collectible?

Most things that have stopped production have become a collector’s item. I remember going into an old music store in The Zhongshan Building in Kampung Attap and they had old cassette tapes for sale. Where there is supply, surely there is demand. So I’m pretty sure they were selling it because there were still cassette enjoyers out there.

I don’t even need to go as far back as cassettes. Nowadays, not many people even own CD Players anymore. Almost everyone is subscribed to Spotify, Apple Music or Youtube. Yet, something as old as vinyl records made a comeback a few years ago and are still going strong. Even modern day musicians are releasing vinyl records that are selling out fast, with the most recent being Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl, which sold out within an hour of release.

So will it be the same with MMPB? I guess time will tell. I for sure am keeping close to mine. I myself have some very old MMPBs with book covers you would probably never be able to find in bookstores anymore. I would be really surprised if you actually could. 

In fact, back in the early 2010s, a friend of mine bought me a very old book from a very old shop in England – Phantastes by George MacDonald. This book was originally published in 1858. And mine was the 1982 version of it. George MacDonald was a mentor to Lewis Carroll, writer of Alice in Wonderland, and influenced notable writers especially J.R.R. Tolkien, writer of Lord of the Rings, and C.S. Lewis, writer of Chronicles of Narnia. Now I can’t help but wonder if this would be a book that collectors would be interested in buying somewhere in the future.

The End Is Also A New Beginning

The MMPB started in 1939, when Pocket Books first published those little paperbacks for 25 cents. A quarter. Back then, making books cheap was a radical act. It put stories into the hands of people who would never have walked into a proper bookstore. And maybe that’s the most fitting legacy of the format — it did its job so well that it raised a generation of readers who eventually outgrew it.

My copies of those old MMPBs will stay on my shelf. The one with the yellowing pages and the cover art that will hopefully stand the test of time. The Phantastes that came all the way from a dusty shop in England. They’re not just books anymore. They’re artefacts of a reading life. Of bus rides and LRT seats and afternoons with nowhere to be except inside someone else’s story.

Maybe that’s what I’ll tell people when they ask why I still have them. “They stopped making these, you know.” And honestly? That’s reason enough to keep them.