Last weekend we were cleaning out the garage, where we had stored (amongst other things) several boxes of books. Unfortunately, the garage had proven to be a lot damper than we had originally thought, and the boxes turned out to be breeding grounds for mold and mildew. We ended up throwing out quite a few books, which is a heart-rending experience for any book lover. (We hadn’t been expecting to be re-reading most of them, but we had been expecting to find new homes for them.)
However, that’s not the punch-line to the story. About the only things that we didn’t end up losing were various graphic novels (a.k.a. comic books, for the uninitiated) and a few hardcover books published before 1940. We had to dust off the covers of these, but they were otherwise totally fine. Note that these were not buy-in-mint-condition-and-place-in-mylar-under-sterile-conditions graphic novels. These are books that I had read and enjoyed like any other book, and then stored away to be read again in a few years.
Now, I’ve always known that we started using lesser quality wood-pulp paper during WW2, and that limited edition comic books use specially treated paper so that they’ll still be collectible in 20 years, but it had never before struck me how much difference a high quality paper makes in real household conditions. The books that failed the garage test are exactly the same ones that are going to be yellowing and smell musty in 10 years, while the winners are going to be pleasant to have around.
So what would it take, I wonder, to get mainstream publishers to go back to using high-quality paper. I’m guessing that costs aren’t the big issue. My understanding is that the cover costs more to print than the actual content, and publishers are perfectly willing to let resellers destroy unsold books rather than pay the cost of shipping them back. This implies that the paper is probably expense number 4: behind the cover, the transport, and the advertising, but probably (alas) ahead of what they pay the authors. (Please, somebody, tell me that I’m wrong about the last point.) If we could convince one of the publisher’s to start giving us an improved reading experience by giving us better paper, would we change our buying habits enough to convince other publishers to do the same? Might authors have enough clout to jump ship to publishers who cared enough to package their books well? That’s what I thought — just wishful thinking. Still, a fellow can dream.
In the meantime, if anyone can give me a list of the small publishers who do use high quality paper, perhaps I can start voting with my own wallet.
