Anyway, I think this difference is probably at the heart of the size issue, at least on the seller's end: the extra cost and hassle of having to ship the whole large-size paperback back to the publisher make them less attractive, whatever the benefits to the reader may be.
It's not attractive to rackjobbers and people who put the books into a set rack-size distribute a majority of the mass markets (they're also responsible for a disproportionate percentage of those mass market returns, fwiw).
I think it's safe to say that in colloquial usage, trade paperback=large format paperback for the purposes of the discussion. While there are a few publishers who print mass-market size novels but sell them as non-strippable, they're a small minority. White Wolf was a gaming company, and my guess would be the possibility of returns was a headache of its own, given the prior experience it had with its other merchandise.
But then, all I know about this issue comes from seeing Patrick Nielsen Hayden explain the trade/ mass-market thing about a dozen times on Usenet, back in the day...
I'm sure that he would have also said that trade paperbacks were consider bookstore paperbacks (I think this would be the 'trade' in question, as opposed to mass market, which were distributed more as "disposable books" or "magazines" in their early days, rather than books, which is why stripping their covers started).
So you published those for bookstores, who will order them; you assume that you're not going to get those books out through IDs into grocery stores, etc., and you go ahead with the larger format. Someone like Jordan or Goodkind, though, will sell into grocery stores, etc., so even if they're long, you want them in the mass market format.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2004-09-10 03:42 pm (UTC)issue, at least on the seller's end: the extra cost and hassle of having to ship the whole large-size paperback back to the publisher make them less attractive, whatever the benefits to the reader may be.
It's not attractive to rackjobbers and people who put the books into a set rack-size distribute a majority of the mass markets (they're also responsible for a disproportionate percentage of those mass market returns, fwiw).
I think it's safe to say that in colloquial usage, trade paperback=large format paperback for the purposes of the discussion. While there are a few publishers who print mass-market size novels but sell them as non-strippable, they're a small minority. White Wolf was a gaming company, and my guess would be the possibility of returns was a headache of its own, given the prior experience it had with its other merchandise.
But then, all I know about this issue comes from seeing Patrick Nielsen Hayden explain the trade/ mass-market thing about a dozen times on Usenet, back in the day...
I'm sure that he would have also said that trade paperbacks were consider bookstore paperbacks (I think this would be the 'trade' in question, as opposed to mass market, which were distributed more as "disposable books" or "magazines" in their early days, rather than books, which is why stripping their covers started).
So you published those for bookstores, who will order them; you assume that you're not going to get those books out through IDs into grocery stores, etc., and you go ahead with the larger format. Someone like Jordan or Goodkind, though, will sell into grocery stores, etc., so even if they're long, you want them in the mass market format.