Paperback Writer

The paperback edition of The Barbary Pirates in all its iterations (large print, a foreign edition, etc.) is officially on sale and it’s always satisfying when that version comes out. While I cherish hardback books, many of my most memorable early reading experiences are paperbacks because pennies were precious. I’ve still got paperbacks of novels such as 1965′s Dune (95 cents) 1959′s A Canticle for Leibowitz (same price) 1961′s The Butterfly Revolution (75 cents) and 1971′s Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins (who lives about ten miles from me) for which I paid a whopping $1.50. Inflation marches on; the U.S. price for Barbary as a standard paperback is ten bucks. Here’s hoping that decades from now, someone will still have a tattered copy and consider it a bargain.

While the e-book is rapidly changing the entire publishing dynamic, most people are introduced to most authors through paperbacks; the first printing for Barbary is about three times the hardback printing. They were invented to make reading cheaper and more portable, which sounds a lot like the e-reader, doesn’t it? They also established a hierarchy of book stature including the “paperback only” title and the pulp, inspiring the Beatles’ tune Paperback Writer. And yep, one of my books has only been published in paperback form, the non-fiction Natural Grace, a collection of essays about Northwest plants and animals.

Since many readers first discover a book in paperback, there’s often a lag between that work and what an author is working on now. It typically would take at least a year to write a book (much longer, possibly, for the idea to percolate), a year between its acceptance and hardback publication, and another year to paperback publication, meaning a reader buying Barbary today is reading something I was embroiled in more than three years ago. As a newspaper guy who wrote stories with immediate impact but a short shelf life, it’s very cool to have books that represent a little longevity. (Still working on that immortality.)

The cover of The Barbary Pirates is very similar to the hardback cover: a good thing since I like that cover and most of the covers for all my other books; I consider myself fortunate in that regard. Writing a book and then hating your own cover would be annoying indeed. I don’t design the covers but I’m allowed to make suggestions and then sign off on the final design, and usually the artists and designers are far more creative than I would be.

A book’s cover, like platinum blond hair, pink socks, or a nose stud, is an opportunity to make an instant impression and publishers put a lot of thought of into it. They draw on the experience of thousands of titles but it’s still art more than science, a marketing guessing game. Each reader reacts differently. I remember picking up Fellowship of the Ring from a drugstore rack while a teen when I’d never heard of Tolkien; I was intrigued by the the oddball fantasy abstraction on the cover of the Bantam paperback, and kept looking at it and trying to match it with what was inside. I read later that Tolkien hated those American paperback covers and that the artist had never actually read Lord of the Rings. The odd thing is, the cover worked for me! So who knows.

A lot of thought also goes into titles for that same instant impression. My original title for The Barbary Pirates was Barbary Fire, which I considered more original, but the publisher reasoned (correctly, I think) that the book buyer needed a quicker clue to what the book is about. Since pirates have been in the news ever since, it was a good call. At least six of my book titles have been either at the publisher’s suggestion or a collaboration. Yet the one title a reviewer suggested must be “computer generated,” Napoleon’s Pyramids, was one I thought of myself and kept from the very beginning.

Paperbacks today are complex communication mechanisms with not just the story but reviews, an author bio, a display of other titles, and an excerpt from the next upcoming book. They are a piece of art that is an efficient conveyer of information in a way e-books have not quite achieved yet. They also hang around; I have favorites like the ones above. And they show up on sales racks in stores where the majority of Americans who never visit a brick-and-mortar bookstore might find them. So here’s to the paperback, and I hope you enjoy The Barbary Pirates!