A Love Letter to the Mass Market Paperbacks
Reflecting on the rise, the reign, and the slow fade of a format that shaped how we fell in love with romance.
A Love Letter to the Mass Market Paperback
Before TikTok hauls and custom sprayed edges... there were spinning racks.
You’d see them tucked into grocery stores and gas stations, spines facing out, a chaotic rainbow of foil titles and bare-chested dukes. That was the start of the rise of romance. Not from some curated booklist but from flipping through creased paperbacks with titles like The Raven Prince or A Man to Call My Own.
With ReaderLink exiting the mass market paperback space by the end of 2025, it hit me: we’re not just losing a format. We’re losing a piece of romance history.
This isn’t a hot take about the business of publishing. But I want to talk about what these books meant.
Because if you’ve ever read an entire Nora Roberts trilogy in one weekend, all from the used bookstore clearance bin, you know: These books weren’t just accessible. They were foundational.
ICYMI: I chatted about this major change in publishing on the podcast.
Why Mass Market Meant Something
Mass markets were the entry point.
For teenage readers sneaking a bodice ripper off the library shelf.
For budget readers grabbing 5-for-$5 secondhand.
For older women passing dog-eared copies down to granddaughters.
For me.
They were small enough to fit in a purse, tough enough to survive being dropped in the tub, and cheap enough to take a chance on. You didn’t need to know if it was trending. You just picked a cover that looked dramatic and hoped there’d be at least one good grovel in the end.
That kind of casual, accessible discovery feels a little (a lot?) endangered now.
A Brief History of the Mass Market Paperback
The modern mass market paperback kicked off in 1935 when Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, wanted to make quality books affordable and widely available. He priced them at sixpence (about the cost of a pack of cigarettes), and stocked them in railway stations, not just bookstores. That accessibility was revolutionary.
In the U.S., the first American mass market paperback was published in 1939 by Pocket Books: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. It sold for 25 cents.
The format hit its stride during World War II when the U.S. military printed over 120 million “Armed Services Editions” for soldiers to carry in their pockets. Books were seen as morale boosters, small comforts in harsh conditions. And that portability stuck.
By the 1950s and '60s, paperbacks were everywhere. Grocery stores. Drugstores. Airports. Mass market paperbacks weren’t just popular, they were omnipresent. By the mid-1960s, over 200 million copies were sold annually in the U.S. alone.
And then, romance entered the chat.
The Romance Boom
In the early years, mass market was mostly mystery, sci-fi, and literary fiction. But romance caught up and then dominated.
1957: Harlequin started reprinting British romances in Canada.
1972: The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss broke the mold. It was bold. It was sensual. And it sold over 2.3 million copies. All in mass market paperback.
That same year, Avon rebranded as a romance-forward publisher and never looked back. We got Shanna. We got Whitney, My Love. And we got Fabio on the cover.
By the late ’80s and early ’90s, mass market romance was outselling every other fiction genre. In 1994, romance accounted for 46% of all mass market paperback sales in the U.S.
We’re talking tens of millions of copies. Every year.
If You’ve Been Reading My Once Upon a Genre Series…
…you know how important mass market was to every era of romance.
The sweeping historical sagas of the ’70s
The big-haired, big-personality heroines of the ’80s
The paranormal boom of the 2000s (hello, vampires)
These weren’t trends that built slowly, they exploded. And they did so on spinning racks, purse-sized editions, with the kind of low-stakes pricing that let readers try something new without overthinking it.
Mass markets made reading casual, personal, and addictive in the best way.
If you want to check out the Once Upon a Genre series, click here. Or start with the first article below:
The Slow Decline of Mass Market Paperbacks
But like many things that once felt infinite, the mass market era slowly began to fade.
In the early 2000s, mass market paperbacks still made up around 12% of adult fiction sales in the U.S. But by 2020, that number had dropped to under 5%. And by 2023, they accounted for just 3% of trade publishing revenue. That kind of decline isn’t just a blip. It’s the quiet shuttering of a cultural stronghold.
Prices went up. Digital reading took off. Supermarkets and big box stores shrank their book sections. And for publishers, the economics of trade paperbacks made more sense. The “book as object” that looks better on Instagram. Trade editions opened doors to bookstores, influencer pushes, TikTok tables, and higher sticker prices.
Still, something essential was lost.
And now, the final nail is being hammered in.
As reported by Publishers Weekly, ReaderLink, the major distributor responsible for getting mass market paperbacks into big box stores, pharmacies, and supermarkets, will officially stop distributing them by the end of 2025.
If you’ve ever grabbed a romance off a shelf at Walmart or found your next favorite book in the checkout aisle at Target, that was ReaderLink. This isn’t just about a company pulling back. It’s about mass market paperbacks no longer being viable in the retail ecosystem they once ruled. No more spinning racks. No more low-priced paperbacks by the shampoo aisle. The places we first fell in love with romance are being erased, one business decision at a time.
What We’re Losing (and Gaining?)
Romance is evolving. And today’s covers are beautiful, the sprayed edges are cool, and the tropes are tropier than ever.
But we are losing something:
The accessibility. Print books that cost less than $10
The discoverability. A book you pick up because it’s there where you are.
The nostalgia. That sensory memory of yellowing pages and creased spines.
Mass market romance was always for the reader. Cheap enough to risk. Ubiquitous enough to find anywhere. Casual enough to feel like it was yours, not just something you were supposed to like.
So maybe this is a love letter. Maybe it’s a eulogy.
Maybe it’s just me already thinking about missing the smell of old paper and the feel of a book that’s been read a dozen times before.
Either way, I’d love to hear your memories too.
What was your first mass market romance?
Did you steal it from your mom’s shelf? Find it at a garage sale?
Do you still have it?
Drop it in the comments. Let’s keep the nostalgia alive.
xo,
Francesca
🧡 Want more genre deep dives?
Read more about romance through the decades… Catch up on the Once Upon a Genre series here.
Sources:
P.S. If you're an author or brand and think you might be interested in advertising on our Substack, you can find more info here.
Sharing our love for books as Under the Covers Book Blog since 2011, running the Romanceopoly yearly reading challenge since 2019 and hosting the Reading Under the Covers podcast since 2020. Launched Mysterylandia in 2025.
Oh, this is just how I've been feeling whenever I notice that mass markets aren't being promoted or pushed because they're nearly a dinosaur. I blasted through four or five a week back in the day and it didn't break my savings account or take up too much space if I wanted to keep several for a re-read. And, it was my first of several genres and authors.
Thank you so much for acknowledging the loss of MMP’s. I was beginning to feel so alone in a book world where they were no longer existing. Still my favorite format of book to read.