Mass market vs Trade - Media type

I differentiate mass market book binding from Trade book binding in my local database, but it doesn't look like LT does.

Is that just something I'm going to have to live with, or is there a feature I'm not seeing, somewhere?

thank you

You can add your own media, so as to match your local database. (I have a few paperbacks with a library book binding added - socalled turtle backs, so I considered adding that as a media, but since it was only a few, I just dropped a note for myself in Comments.)

>1 margaretbartley:

Actually, mass market and trade paperbacks are bound the same way. It's just the size that is different.

The distinction seems to have become less evident in recent years. MMPBs have been "growing" taller, while trade paper varies anyhow.

>1 margaretbartley: Add them as subcategories of paperback. Once you do, they will appear as option without having to open 'show complete list', so it's no hassle

SandraArdnas (#5):

Add them as subcategories of paperback.

Can you do that now? Back when Media was introduced you couldn't add custom media types at that level of granularity. I asked for it at the time; I guess Tim quietly introduced it at some point between then and now.

>6 lorax: I added epub and PDF as subcategories of ebook.I assume it's available across the board

It may only have three layers, so Book, Paper Book, Paperback may be as far as you can go. I haven't tried adding a fourth level to anything, though I have added other subcategories (what they might have been escapes me at the moment).

>6 lorax: I have some self created subcategories. I'm not convinced the system is stable though

SandraArdnas (#7):


I added epub and PDF as subcategories of ebook.I assume it's available across the board


Ebook is a second-level category, analogous to Paper Book. Previously it was not possible to nest at the third-level (Book > Paper Book > Paperback > MMPB). If you haven't actually done this, please don't tell someone it's possible to do.

>10 lorax: What exactly was the harm done? If it's not possible, the person would have lost minute in vain? As it happens, it IS possible to nest it under paperbook. I've just tested it. So perhaps you should check your own assumptions before issuing reprimands

SandraArdnas (#11):

Mostly it's just that I believe bad information is worse than no information, though you're right that the impact in this case is teeny. I was partly irritated because I got excited about this being possible (since it previously hadn't been) when you first mentioned it, and then realized that it actually wasn't.

More generally:

The actual situation here is confusing, and made worse by the visual similarity between "Paper Book" and "Paperback" - easy to confuse them at a glance. Here's what it looks like the case is now:

For in-catalog editing, it is still not possible to nest any newly created categories under "Paperback". (It is of course possible to nest them under "Paper Book".)

For editing from the Edit page, the UI will allow you to tell it to nest a newly created category under "Paperback", but it will not actually do so (and this is something I didn't know until today, having only ever tried from the catalog). It will create the category but nest it under Paper Book - and then apparently show the Media type differently in the catalog vs on the edit page (which may be what Nicole_VanK describes as not being "stable" in #9).

So, if it is possible to nest categories that deep, I haven't found out how to do so (which is not to say it's not possible, just that I don't know how to do it if it is.)

>12 lorax: I've meanwhile deleted the test book, so I can't check whether it sticks in all circumstances. For the purposes of the OP, if nesting under paperback misbehaves, nesting under paper book could be good enough.

Personally, I've learned a million things about this site because people propose solutions when someone asks, so even when they aren't perfect or don't exactly work in that particular case, they are often useful information. LT is choke full of features one might not have encountered even after a year or more on site.

I've been here since 2007, and there are plenty of features that I've never used, even if I might maybe have heard of them. And they keep adding new ones.

>3 lilithcat: The quality of the paper is really different, The qualifty of the binding can be quite different - sewn vs. glued. We have many books that are 40 or 50 years old, or older, and the mass market books, with their newsprint paper, have not stood up nearly as well as the higher quality trade books.

>15 SeattleMetaphysical:

That's not necessarily true. It depends entirely on the choices the publisher makes.

>15 SeattleMetaphysical: 40-50 years ago was a long time ago. These days even most fiction hardcovers are glued (and some use newsprint paper).

I've got some astonishingly flimsy trade paperbacks.

I don't think I've ever seen a high-quality mass market book in the supermarket or drug store.

>4 paradoxosalpha:

..." while trade paper varies anyhow."

It does _now_. ;^(

Compare any junk mass-market paperback with the paper used in the (original) trade paperback edition of Robert Caro's "The Power Broker" (1979)

The paper quality is almost as good as the original hardcover edition.

>15 SeattleMetaphysical:

Exactly! I have paperbacks in my library collection which have sewn signatures in the bindings, for crying out loud. How long before a bound paper book is put in a glass-display case in the front entries of elementary schools so that the little tykes can see an example of such a relic?

(Oh! Mom! And _next_ to the "book" was a _letter_! It had a stamp on it! They were called "postage stamps"! I asked teacher if she'd ever received a letter. She said, "no".)

>17 AnnieMod:

Re: "These days even most fiction hardcovers are glued (and some use newsprint paper)."

And, "these days" lots of people regard McDonald's hamburgers as "fine dining".