# RIP to the mass market paperback **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [December 15, 2025, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726 "2025-12-15T16:47:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2025, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/21 "2025-12-15T23:00:55Z")
You picked up book 4 of a series without reading the first 3? I expected a scantily clad woman on the cover… Brian ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2025, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/22 "2025-12-15T23:02:23Z")
There goes my hot tub reading… ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2025, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/23 "2025-12-15T23:07:59Z")
> [@N9IWP](#): > > You picked up book 4 of a series without reading the first 3? > I expected a scantily clad woman on the cover… Give me a break, I was probably seven years old 😀. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2025, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/24 "2025-12-15T23:10:18Z")
In fairness, you could pick up most of the Eternal Champion books and find your way right into them… ---
**Author:** ![Lickety](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lickety/32/20399_2.png) [@Lickety](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lickety)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2025, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/25 "2025-12-15T23:15:01Z")
While I’m a relatively young person. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually seen a mass market turnstile that wasn’t caked in a layer of dust. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/26 "2025-12-16T00:08:17Z")
Buy some new now - in 25 years they might be worth something. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/27 "2025-12-16T00:17:42Z")
My first two book purchases as a kid was off a table of cheap paperbacks at Two Guys, a no-longer existent discount chain. I bought the just for their titles: _Invasion of the Robots_, a Roger Elwood anthology, and _Ellison Wonderland_, because I liked the pun. I think they were two for a quarter. I could talk about paperbacks all day. Don’t run: I won’t. I’ll only add that for a time, many publishers issued original paperbacks, not reprints, in every genre from mystery and sf to biographies and nonfiction works, even entire lines of serious books like the Mentor Library. MMPs were usually treated as a joke by he industry but not by ordinary readers who devoured them. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/28 "2025-12-16T00:52:43Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > But how many words in all those pages? If the pages are much smaller, there is less content on each page. Tell you what: pick a number between 100 and 1300, and I’ll count the words on that page of my copy of War and Remembrance. If it’s the first or last page of a chapter (which would tend to have more white space than usual), I’d count the next or preceding page, respectively. Otherwise, I’ll count the page you pick. We should be able to get a decent guesstimate from that. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/29 "2025-12-16T02:11:10Z")
I happened to have a copy of _The Stories of John Cheever_ next to me, so I started counting. 819 pages and around 400 words of tiny type per page. That’s over 320,000 words. But not a contender. I’ve always heard that William L. Shirer’s _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_ was the longest paperback ever. It managed to fit 500,000 words into 1250 or so pages, half again as many 400-word pages as _Stories._ ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/30 "2025-12-16T02:14:30Z")
For much of my formative years, it would only be a slight exaggeration to say that mass market paperbacks were what books (or at least, novels) _were_. There’s just something so raw and pure about reading a book in that form. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/31 "2025-12-16T02:27:36Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I’ve always heard that William L. Shirer’s _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_ was the longest paperback ever. Anybody else remember the proliferation of swasikas on the paperback spinner rack about 50 years ago? Jack Higgins, Ira Levin, Frederick Forsyth. Paperbacks about Nazis were really popular back when we thought they were extinct. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/32 "2025-12-16T02:28:06Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > and it’s a huge book containing 966 pages. You couldn’t produce a book like that as a mass market paperback.. Watching _It: Welcome to Derry_ has inspired me to re-read _It_ for the first time since the 1980s. I’m reading it on my Kindle Fire. I originally read it in a mass-market paperback that had around 1100 pages. During the aftermath of the hurricane last year with 8 days without electricity I pulled some mmps off the shelf to read. It was the first time I read deadtree books in more than 15 years, and will be the last time in my life barring another hurricane-scale disaster. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/33 "2025-12-16T02:29:05Z")
Speaking of mass market paperbacks, do you folks remember the two-books in one volumes, where you’d finish one slim novel, flip the book over, and read the other short novel that was on the other side? Ah, yes, the Ace doubles! So many scifi books! ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/34 "2025-12-16T02:32:41Z")
Yes. to the Ace Doubles! Here be one of my faves. [https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1182046208i/1226425.jpg](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1182046208i/1226425.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/35 "2025-12-16T02:34:11Z")
I still have a couple dozen Ace SF Doubles. I grabbed one with a Murray Leinster story for a quick read a couple years ago and each page would fall out as soon as I turned it. When I finished I was half buried in discarded pages. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/36 "2025-12-16T02:34:27Z")
The Ace Double covers were a whole amazing genre of art. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/37 "2025-12-16T03:40:26Z")
I would expect hard backs to go extinct. Who wants to spend $32 for a mystery that’s read in 3 hours? Paperbacks have gotten ridiculously expensive. $12 now? Maybe $14? Ebooks are the cheapest option now. Unfortunately my eyes get tired and start watering much quicker on a Kindle. I can read an entire Mystery paperback in an afternoon without eye strain. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/38 "2025-12-16T03:53:11Z")
Books with that design are technically known as _Tête-bêche_, French for head-to-tail. (Sometimes instead called _dos-à-dos_, French for back-to-back.) They’re a collector’s genre, with antecedents hundreds of years old, all in hardback of course. The Ace Books line of science fiction MMPs is probably most famous today, because sf people are fanatical\*, but Ace didn’t get around to a pair of science fiction titles until their 31st release, a pair from A. E. van Vogt. The earlier ones were mystery, western, and adventure. So were the majority of later ones, since Ace put out four books a month and only one at most was sf, with very irregular appearances. \*I’m an sf people, if you didn’t know. I joined fandom and went to my first convention in 1969. This year marks my 50th anniversary as a member of the (now) Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Everybody in the field is nuts. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/39 "2025-12-16T03:59:05Z")
Ah, I see. I only bought the science fiction Aces, had no interest in the other genres. ETA: I wonder whether I still have at least one of them all these years later. I’d go check my bookcases but I have a cat on my legs. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726/40 "2025-12-16T04:44:36Z")
Considering the price of hardbacks and trade paperbacks, I may never buy another book… ☹ ☹ ☹ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-to-the-mass-market-paperback/1025726.md?page=3)