‘We’re losing accessibility’: America says goodbye to the mass-market paperback; The Guardian, February 24, 2026

David Smith, The Guardian ; ‘We’re losing accessibility’: America says goodbye to the mass-market paperback

[Kip Currier: Since 2020, I've taught a "required core course" for the graduate students in the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information. The course is LIS 2040: The Information Professional in Communities. I posted the note (copied below) for my students, with the excerpt from a 2/24/26 Guardian article about the decline of access to mass market paperback books, as accessibility and breaking down barriers are key thematic topics in the course.

My 2025 Bloomsbury book Ethics, Information, and Technology has a chapter on Access. Accessibility -- in its various manifestations -- is a recurring issue throughout the book's other chapters, such as those exploring ethical issues of Intellectual Freedom, Intellectual Property, Open Movements and Traditional Knowledge, Social Media, Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies, and more.]

[Kip Currier: The most important take-away in my LIS 2040 course is how we as information professionals (and in our capacities as individuals in our personal lives, too) can help to break down barriers that individuals and communities face. This Guardian article on the demise of the mass market paperback Links to an external site.implicates the ability of people to access information and has a whole host of ramifications, like affordability of books, literacy rates, and platforms for diverse authors and genres.

In the second half of the term, we'll be thinking extensively about ways that we can all work to mitigate and break down barriers of many kinds.]

[Excerpt]

"The so-called ‘pocket book’ sold in supermarkets is being phased out across the US, the latest sign of an ongoing shift in how people are choosing to read

Shelly Romero has early memories of going to her local supermarket and picking pulp fiction off the shelves. “We were very working class; my mom was working two jobs sometimes,” she recalls. “The appeal of books being cheaper and smaller and able to be carried around was definitely a thing.”

For generations of readers, the gateway to literature was not a hushed library or a polished hardback but a wire spinner rack in a supermarket, pharmacy or railway station. There, amid chewing gum and cigarettes, sat the mass-market paperback: squat, roughly 4in by 7in and cheap enough to be bought on a whim.

But the era of the “pocket book” is drawing to a close. ReaderLink, the biggest book distributor in the US, announced recently that it would stop distributing mass-market paperbacks. The decision follows years of plummeting sales, from 131m units in 2004 to 21m in 2024, and marks the end of a format that once democratised reading for the working class...

"They had that democratic aspect to them where you can just find them anywhere and it always felt like it was the pick ‘n’ mix candy-type store where there is something here for everyone, whether it’s the Harlequin romance novel or something very pulpy like a sci-fi or horror novel that you could quickly get.”...

“We’re definitely losing accessibility and that’s a huge thing right now, especially in this country, whether it’s libraries being defunded, book bannings happening, one person saying let’s get rid of 200 books because I don’t want my child to read diverse authors."

The secret Afghan women’s book club defying the Taliban to read Orwell; The Guardian, February 19, 2026

 Azada Raha, from Rukhshana Media, The Guardian; The secret Afghan women’s book club defying the Taliban to read Orwell

"Most of the books the five women have discussed since they started the reading circle last June are classics, and most deal with issues of power, suffering, and the place of women, though they have embraced variety. The works they’ve read include George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Zoya Pirzad’s I’ll Turn Off the Lights and Symphony of the Dead, also by Abbas Maroufi.

Most of the books can be found online and downloaded free, although occasionally they borrow books from libraries.

They meet every week for an hour-and-a-half at the home of one of the members, varying the location to avoid scrutiny in a country where women’s freedoms have been severely curtailed."

E-books are on the line as Congress considers future of library funding; USA TODAY, July 29, 2025

Sarah D. Wire, USA TODAY ; E-books are on the line as Congress considers future of library funding

[Kip Currier: Why is it okay for Trump and members of the GOP to secretly fund nearly a billion dollars to retrofit a Qatari plane, but it's not okay with them for public libraries to continue to receive IMLS grants that provide access to books, summer reading programs, and services that promote literacy and educated work forces? 

There's something fundamentally unethical -- and adverse to the common good -- about supporting measures that give billionaires more and more money, while cutting funds to museums and libraries that improve the lives of millions of Americans every day.

If you care about reading, education, libraries, and museums, let your legislators know NOW!]

[Excerpt]

"States' libraries to lose as much as half their funding

The Institute for Museum and Library Services, a tiny, little-known federal agency, provides grants to states that account for 30% to 50% of state library budgets, according to the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies.

For decades it has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in congressionally approved funds through grants to state libraries in all 50 states and Washington, DC, and to library, museum and archives programs. It serves 35,000 museums and 123,000 libraries across the country, according to its website.

The impact of losing the money will be different in each state because each spends its portion of the funding differently.

Some will have to fire staff and end tutoring and summer reading programs. Others will cut access to electronic databases, end intra-library loans or reduce access to books for the deaf and blind. Many will have to stop providing internet service for rural libraries or e-book access statewide.

With the expectation that Congress won't buck Trump and fund the museum and library services institute, the future of these backbone "compassionate" library services is now under discussion across the nation, said John Chrastka, founder of EveryLibrary, a nonprofit that organizes grassroot campaigns for library funding and blocking book bans."