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| My beloveds |
If you watch booktube, you'll see that everyone is obsessed with hardback books, there are quite a few people who only buy their books in hardback. While there are some perks to this, I personally also have quite a few negatives towards it as well. The main perk to buying hardback books, obviously, is that you get to read the new books straight away without having to wait for the paperback to come out. I normally choose to wait for paperbacks (unless it's something I'm truly desperate for, looking at you, Harry Potter) but the waiting can be agonising sometimes.
I'd also like to quickly add here that I like small books to be in hardback, like J.K. Rowling's 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard', that's so small and thin, it would not be a good book in paperback. Or fancy copies of things. They always have to be in hardback as well. Mostly my debate is just arguing the negatives rather than the positives, because the positives are all basically that they're pretty books and everyone likes pretty books.
Obviously, the negative points of one format are going to equal the positives of the other. The most notable one being price; price as a negative for hardbacks and a positive for paperbacks. Don't get me started on the general price of books, I personally think that £6.99-£8.99 is a ridiculous price for a book (that's why I mostly get my books from Amazon, Book Depository or the library). Saying that, though, the price of a hardback book is even more ridiculous. Say your average hardback book cost between £11.99-£14.99, that's a crazy amount of money to be paying each time you buy a book. So yes, though there are negatives to the cost of buying books in general, it is definitely much easier on your purse to be buying paperbacks.
Some personal issues I have with hardback books are their size and dust jackets. I find dust jackets unbelievably annoying, they constantly slide about when you read, the edges of the jacket constantly get damaged, and you can never put them on properly again if you take it off, it always looks weird. I tend to remove the dust jackets and then lose them, which is why I'm so grateful that books like Harry Potter have the same design underneath the dust jacket as well as on it; I have absolutely no clue where the dust jackets for Harry Potter six and seven are. I know it looks nice if the book underneath the dust jacket is all plain coloured or patterned nicely, but then you don't get to appreciate the cover if you do lose the dust jacket. My other issue is the size. Hardbacks are HUGE. Most of the time, if you ever see me reading a hardback book, I'm holding it with two hands. My hands or not big enough and my wrists not strong enough to hold the book with two hands like I do with paperbacks. Hardback books are also much taller, which equals more two-handed reading.
There is one major con to paperback books, that being the amount of damage they sustain. I personally love cracking the spine and being able to lie all of my books flat (we'll get to that later in a different book debate), but it pains me so much when the cover gets bent, which often happens with paperback books. Firstly, the cover bends when you read it, which is immensely annoying when the book is no longer flat when closed, but even worse, occasionally the corner of the cover gets bent. You can bend the cover back to normal as much as you like, but it'll never look right again and that breaks my little heart. Cover damage is a sin. Another issue I have with the cover of paperback books is that the plastic covering on the front will sometimes start to peel off. I HATE this, it's awful and it makes your books look awful and publishers should never, never put a plasticy cover over the front of books. It looks kind of like when you cover your hands in glue and peel it off, but less fun.
Overall, however, I much, much prefer paperback books. Nothing thrills me more than a brand new, unopened, fresh paperback book, and no fancy hardcovers will ever change my mind of this. Paperbacks look so nice on the shelf together (nicer than hardbacks, in my opinion) and I can't express my love for a good, nice-feeling paperback.
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