NEW YORK (AP) -- The life of a paperback book -- dog-eared, underappreciated and shoved in readers' back pockets for decades -- has never been glamorous.
Now it may no longer even be profitable.Sales of mass-market paperbacks -- long a staple at newsstands, supermarkets and airport kiosks -- dropped 7.8 percent from 1996 to 1997, according to Veronis, Suhler and Associates, an investment bank specializing in media companies.
Part of the decline may be due to their $8 price tag.
"The savings aren't as great as they once were when paperbacks were under $5 and hardcovers were more than $20," said Jim Milliot, the business and news editor at Publishers Weekly.
Mass-market paperbacks accounted for 39 percent of all book sales in 1993, but fell to 36 percent in 1997, according to the Book Industry Study Group, a publishing trade association.
About 419 million of the books sold in 1997, down from 439 million in 1992, the association found. It predicted that sales would drop to about 416 million by 2002.
Since publisher Pocket Books sold the first modern mass-market books for 25 cents just before World War II, compactness and affordability have been their primary appeal.
But as prices for mass-market paperbacks -- many of them popular fiction, romance and mystery titles -- approach those of the slicker and larger trade paperbacks, the appeal may be waning.
"Mass-market publishers may be pricing themselves out of the market," said Richard Howorth, president of the American Booksellers Association.
Unlike smaller bookstores, superstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders Books & Music focus most of their promotional muscle on new titles, often letting mass-market books fend for themselves.
And with chain booksellers heavily discounting best-selling hardcovers, many readers have little incentive to wait a year or more for a book to come out in paperback.