An Unexpected Glimpse into Irish Book Buying Habbits

The fact that I'm operating this blog renders the following statement redundant but, I am an avid reader of books. As such, I regularly pre-order titles that pique my interest ahead of time. This in itself doesn't warrant a post, but in recent weeks something has been happening that caught me by surprise. February has seen a number of books released that are of interest to me, and of course I pre-ordered them all in anticipation.

The first of these books to release was Stars Above, a collection of stories set in Marissa Meyer’s wonderful Lunar Chronicles universe. Upon popping into my local book store to get my pre-order, I received a trade paperback copy of the book, rather than the hardback that I had anticipated. Having already gotten the previous volumes in the series in paperback, this didn't cause me any due concern. However, two further pre-orders that I picked up today were in the same format.

I enquired with the manager of the store, and she informed me that this was something that was becoming more and more common in Ireland (specifically in the Republic.) From what I gathered, Ireland has never been strong on the uptake of hardback editions and as a result the store’s systems, upon receiving a pre-order by title or author, process the request as a paperback rather than as a hardback.

For many this won’t be an issue, trade paperbacks generally price somewhere between mass market paperbacks and hardbacks, offering a more resilient edition than the former, while being lighter, and cheaper than the latter. And as I've stated before, these books were thankfully additions to series’ in which I already owned paperback copies of previous entries. I doubt I would have been quite so happy had this not been the case.