formats

Tom Rowley asks publishers, agents and the boss of the Booker why fiction still debuts in hardback when readers clearly prefer paperbacks. The answer is margin; the first edition is a “glorified marketing tool” for the paperback a year later. Indies are already breaking the pattern: Fitzcarraldo has always done paperback-first, and Faber recently published Eliza Clark’s “She’s Always Hungry” in both formats simultaneously. Fine for non-fiction and cookbooks. For a novel you want to shove in a bag, less so.

Jess Love acquires a binder of 92 DVDs from a neighbour’s porch and talks herself into a moral framework around physical media, parenting, and opting out of streaming. The real subject is the reminiscence bump: why the technologies of your formative years feel not just familiar but correct, and how nostalgia oscillates between protective instinct and self-delusion.