so i wait the months, might even be year, to get a book in paperback rather than hardcover, and what happens? it's one of those oversize paperbacks, not the normal sized, well, the size of paperback that seems to be the majority. I guess book prices have gone up, but still, why the double dipping? DVD makers do this all the time, but they add features, and usually it's the earlier simpler version that becomes cheaper. with books, it's the more expensive version comes out first, then supposedly a much cheaper version comes out much later. but why? okay, doing some research on wikipedia comes with mass market paperbacks and trade paperbacks, which would explain the large and more expensive paperbacks out there. But you get hardcover (big, durable), trade paperback (smaller, mostly durable), mass market paperback (small, falls apart). So why can't all 3 come out at the same time? Why do new releases, why do they almost always come out on hardcover first? Probably makes sense monetarily, the more people that buy the more expensive version the better, and how much goes back to the author? does the author get a percentage or flat rate per book? i wonder?