The Grand Illusion
The first science fiction books I read (in the late 1950s) were either mass market paperbacks or, very occasionally, library hardcovers. But back then not many SF books were printed in hardcover, and most so published were “classics,” like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , H. Rider Haggard’s She, or Frankenstein .
The first paperback SF novel that I recall reading was A.E. van Vogt’s Slan, which I snitched from my mother’s SF bookcase and took to school – except it was stolen from me on the school bus. Fortunately, that occurred on the way home, and I’d finished reading it. Explaining the loss to my mother was another matter. Still, I have a particular fondness for Slan, because one of the first author blurbs I got was from A.E. van Vogt for my first novel (The Fires of Paratime, later republished in an uncut version as The Timegod).
My first eight novels were only published in paperback, except for The Fires of Paratime , which had a Science Fiction Book Club hardcover printing as well. The Magic of Recluce was my first novel with a hardcover printing.
I don’t recall ever buying a hard-cover SF or fantasy novel until I was at least in my fifties, for the simple reason that I couldn’t afford hardcovers, at least not in the quantities in which I bought and read mass market paperbacks.
When I left Washington, D.C., and moved to a MUCH smaller house in New Hampshire, to become a full-time writer, I sold most of those paperbacks, well over two thousand of them because there was no place to put them. For all that, I still have a fondness for the mass market paperback.
Those paperbacks developed two generations of readers and writers, and I’m not so sure that ebooks have the same beneficial effect, even if ebooks are much easier to store. And, somehow, to me, trade paperbacks are a compromise representing higher cost and less convenience, while ebooks lack a certain permanence, given that Amazon can erase everything.
I suppose that makes me a creator of fictional futures and fantasies with his heart anchored in the pulp paperback.
Related to your note about Amazon being able to delete everything, I just want to say Thank You for having your ebooks be released without DRM. While Amazon can still reach into someone’s Kindle and remove purchased books, because yours are released without DRM we can at least download or extract them separately so we have a backup.
The innovation of the paperback book was the mass marketing; for once books became available to the masses.
Ebooks at least in theory do the same, and even better – you no longer needs bookshelves, or a house/apartment to put the shelves in.
And yet, as LEM notes, they do seem impermanent, and, yes, Amazon can take them away from you, which just emphasizes how fragile they are.
Ebooks are the future, no doubt…but are they a lasting one?
In 1981 I sold my 600 SF books as I was about to work abroad. The man who bought them (for£18) already had 450. The surprise was that there were only 150 collisions!
And there were none by Perry Rhodan!
I also have several thousand paperbacks on my shelves, though now I buy mainly for my Kindle. My first purchase was ‘A Princess of Mars’ for 50 cents and I still have it and every other book ERB wrote in PB. I also have all the Perry Rhodans published in English. Oh, and yes all of LEM’s books as well, though the latest are on my Kindle for convenience.