Why no hardcovers?

[Matthew Ryan]

There are others on this list who know a helluva lot more than me about the
publishing biz, but my semi-educated guess is that hardcovers are more
expensive to produce and have a higher retail price, whereas trade
paperbacks are cheaper to both the publisher and the customer and they can
sell a lot more. I like those Modern Library hardcovers (there's one for
Blood Meridian, if you want at least one hardcover Cormac) but even they
have seemed to have switched to trade editions. Also, if you do check out
and "lose" that hardcover GR, you can think of it as rescuing it from
further wear and tear rather than, you know, stealing it. My two cents for
what it's worth.

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 2:59 PM, Jordan Hunnicutt <antipusrises at gmail.com>wrote:

> I happened to notice that a couple of titles of Pynchon's library, Crying
> of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow, and much of Cormac McCarthy's library
> don't have hardcovers in print among others I'm sure.  Why is this?  These
> are popular writers, that's why I'm puzzled by this.  I happened to spot a
> weathered hardcover copy of GR in my local library and I was tempted to
> check it out and "lose" it.
>
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