Picador to go paperback

This is something that is particularly interesting to us, as we’re still deciding on how exactly to package our books. Picador—following what seems to me to be a growing trend—is going paperback.

Now Picador, an imprint of Pan MacMillan, the 8th largest publisher in the UK, which has authors such as Helen Fielding, Don DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy on its books, has called time on what it describes as “a moribund market”. From next year it will launch almost every new novel as a £7.99 paperback, with other large publishers expected to follow.

The decision to scrap the system of selling a hardback a year before releasing the paperback has created waves in the publishing world, and is seen by some as the beginning of the end of the format in literary fiction.