How long will that hardcover last?

[Doug Pardee]

It's probably safe to say that most people expect hardcover books to last for decades. But cost-cutting at some publishers is reducing the life of the paper in many hardcovers to just a few years.

Publishers can save about 10 cents per book (wow!) by printing on de-acidified groundwood paper rather than freesheet paper. Groundwood is pulped by a mechanical grinding process that leaves lignin in the paper, and lignin rapidly yellows paper. Freesheet paper is pulped by a chemical process that removes the lignin.

Historically, hardcover books have been printed on freesheet, while newspapers and some paperbacks (especially mass-market) have been printed on groundwood. Over the past decade, however, some of the publishers have started using groundwood even for hardcovers. A 2005 report (link is PDF) points to Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and Warner (now Hachette) as groundwood users, while HarperCollins and Random House were standing firm on freesheet except for R-H's Value publishing division. According to Permanence Matters, half of the New York Times bestseller list is printed on groundwood (I imagine this is a "typical" number, not tied to a specific week).

The report linked above passes along some rumors that some groundwood publishers print library copies on freesheet, and that some freesheet publishers print books destined for Walmart and the like on groundwood.

Unfortunately, it seems that it's difficult to impossible for the book-buyer to distinguish the two kinds of paper. [The following information is just from some quick research; I haven't tried it myself.] Groundwood tends to be less white, but that's probably easily covered up by bleaching. And at least until recently, freesheet paper for books was left an off-white rather than being bleached to pure white. Groundwood has a very slightly smoother feel to it. Groundwood weighs less, by maybe 10-20%, than freesheet.

[MattLarkin]

Interesting info, Doug. Before I got an e-reader I collected books and tried to always buy hardcovers for the collection. Then I got a Kindle and sold all my painstakingly collected books. The convenience of having everything in a single e-reader outweighed the coolness of an impressive bookshelf.

But if I were still collecting, I'd most certainly expect my books to last a long time.

[Mira]

That is interesting! It's interesting how the quality of the product is lessening, but the consumers don't really know it.

For the future, my guess: The cost-cutting will continue until hardcovers become a collector's item. At that point, it will be made by specialty (sp?) sellers, who will market their product, and some may market it as having a better quality of paper.

[Rachel Ventura]

I'll never get rid of my print books, and I'll never get an e-reader -- if it comes to the point where print books no longer exist, then I'm one who just won't buy any more books. (By that point I hope I'll have collected quite a few thousand.)

But I thought I should bring up a point that I hope doesn't get me b& for "encouraging illegal activity": The U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence were both printed on paper made from the hemp plant, not wood pulp from trees -- and as we all know, hemp is the plant commonly associated with its use for manufacturing marijuana. Egyptian scrolls were printed on papyrus, and those haven't exactly met with Mother Nature's compost pile just yet. I think it's entirely possible for paper books to still be manufactured without them being the so-called "dead tree" editions that 1) environmentalists (and I'm one of them) love to hate and 2) the e-ink movement at Amazon is pushing out of the market like, well, dead trees in the Amazon.

The only thing stopping the next bestseller from being printed on hemp paper, and perhaps even the hard covers, is politics. If hemp -- not necessarily weed, but hemp paper -- were allowed to be used to its full "pot"ential as a manufacturing resource, then the DEA et. al. wouldn't have so much "green paper" of their own rolling in towards a pointless and horribly corrupt drug war that's not only futile but full of "bull"-market resources in its own right. Neither would Amazon have a valid point in pushing for digital "paper." I doubt if this is even a thought of the Federales right now, but chances are some agent on the take (not a literary agent, but a spook!) would have someone arrested in the privacy of their own home, out of fear the consumer might roll up page 1 of Hairy Pothead: The Sorcerer Stoned, and (forgive me) burn after reading!

Mary Sue, meet Mary Jane. I think the two can get along just groovy.