According to the booktrade gurus, 1986 was the year that “hardback books began selling like paperbacks”. I honestly had previously wondered when the publishing industry started down the road of ordering up millions of first run hardbacks, all set to sell at hardback prices.

Apparently it all started when Stephen King, Danielle Steele and Tom Clancy, started to put pen to paper, churning out books at a regular schedule.

All this is from a pretty interesting piece in the Telegraph today.

The theorist over at fade theory mentioned a great blog. Conversations in the Book Trade the three-month old blog is the latest creation of a screen-writer in South Korea and features lengthy interviews with a bunch of small-publishers.

I hope they can keep it up. It will be a fun one to see who else turns up in the months ahead.