{"id":867,"date":"2010-08-22T21:56:50","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T04:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepulp.net\/PulpBlogs\/YellowedPerils\/?p=867"},"modified":"2010-08-22T21:56:50","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T04:56:50","slug":"are-paperbacks-going-the-way-of-the-pulps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/2010\/08\/22\/are-paperbacks-going-the-way-of-the-pulps\/","title":{"rendered":"Are paperbacks going the way of the pulps?"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_871\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-871\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/files\/2010\/08\/lamourbook.jpg?resize=150%2C190&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"A paperback edition of Louis L&#039;Amour&#039;s Hondo\" width=\"150\" height=\"190\" class=\"size-full wp-image-871\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-871\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A paperback edition of Louis L'Amour's Hondo<\/figcaption><\/figure><strong>Morgan Holmes<\/strong>, over at the Robert E. Howard United Press Association blog, brings up some valid points in his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rehupa.com\/?p=1970\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cThe End of the Mass Market Paperback\u201d entry<\/a> from Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Like many of you, I discovered in the inexpensive paperbacks of the &#8217;70s many of the writers, stories and characters that originally appeared in the pulp magazines. The paperback reprints continued to be my main source for pulp-era stories through the mid-1990s, when reprints and replicas began to appear.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nYes, as Morgan points out, one of the best things about the paperbacks were their price:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mass market paperbacks were once cheap and everywhere. I can remember buying them at K-Mart, drug stores, the old Hill\u2019s Department stores etc. Truck stops in Texas had the old wire stands with a selection of Louis Lamour paperbacks. One problem I have not seen discussed in any of the blogs or online articles is cost. Mass market paperbacks have gone up in price often greater than the rate of inflation. I once calculated that a Lancer paperback in 1966 costing $.60 would convert in 2007 to $3.81. Paperbacks were costing over double that. Paperback books ceased to be an impulse item. You now had to think hard if you really wanted to buy that paperback, Sturgeon\u2019s Rule was always in the back of your mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I remember scanning the spinning racks of paperbacks in just about every store I went into in the &#8217;70s. They certainly aren&#8217;t as available today, and certainly not as cheap.<\/p>\n<p>It would be a shame to see paperbacks dwindle even more. But, alas, time marches on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Morgan Holmes, over at the Robert E. Howard United Press Association blog, brings up some valid points in his \u201cThe End of the Mass Market Paperback\u201d entry from Saturday. Like many of you, I discovered in the inexpensive paperbacks of the &#8217;70s many of the writers, stories and characters that originally appeared in the pulp [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[4,11],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-pulps"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2qgXO-dZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}