Pocketbooks

A book with a hardcover or that is hardbound is considered a book that has protective covers that are rigid, in most cases made with heavy paper, cloth covered cardboard or with leather in rare cases. In some cases, they also come with a sewn spine which is flexible, so the book can lie flat on any surface when you open it, though in most cases hardcovers will be glued.

Usually a hardcover book will have paper that is acid free, being more durable when compared with a paperback, which usually has paper covers and glued spines, which are easy to damage. It also costs a bit more to make a hardcover book, so the price is larger as well. In many cases a hardcover will come with a dust jacket that is well designed.

If the editor thinks that the book will have large sales, they will usually launch the hardcover book first, while the cheaper paperback will only be launched one year later. If the book is extremely popular, the appearance of a paperback might take even more then that, as the companies try to make as much money as possible from the sale of the book. As soon as people’s attention starts to go down and the sales decrease, they launch a mass market paperback version, which at a much lower cost attracts the attention of new customers, which were not interested before.

In most cases, hardcover editions are only used for authors that have a history of being successful or for very good books, which have a lot of marketing funds behind them.

A hardcover book will usually have a cloth which covers two boards and the pages between them. The pages will be glued on a piece that is flexible, and placed between boards.