Book paper quality ain't what it used to be

Is this the new normal?

I’m pretty sure you’ll understand when I say my experience of reading a book isn’t just about the writing and the narrative; it’s also about the way the book feels in my hands. And lately, I find books just don’t feel as good as they used to.

This point was never clearer to me than on a recent trip to the bookstore, where I had set out to purchase a new hardback book—unusual for me because, as much as I love books, if I spent $30 on every book I read, I’d be spending a small fortune. On this particular occasion, I did what I always do: I read the jackets and a few pages to discern the tone and the quality of the writing. Unlike some new paperbacks, the bindings of these books all seemed fine. But in several, the quality of the paper was so poor that I actually felt offended: what were the publishers thinking? The pages were thin and coarse and sallow, not even as nice as the paper you buy from U-Haul to crumple up in the bottom of a cardboard moving box. Regardless of how good the books themselves might be, I was not going to enjoy reading them if they were printed on this rubbish.

Publishers, I concluded, had pushed the envelope too far in the name of profit, and I was not going to play along. I purchased a hardcover book that both looked interesting and felt reasonably good.

Later, I wondered whether I was imagining this drop in quality, but online I came across plenty of readers on Reddit and Quora and an Alliance of Independent Authors discussion board lamenting the same problem. Some complained about the declining quality of paperbacks, too, while others pointed out—fair enough—that the whole point of paperbacks is that they’re of lower quality so they can be sold for less money and made accessible to more readers. But when you buy a hardcover book, you expect something more lasting—a more pleasing aesthetic and tactile experience.

I dug farther, and that’s when I discovered there’s more to the story than corporate greed. In short, the industry is experiencing a severe paper shortage.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who went pandemic shopping for toilet paper and found empty shelves. I’m not suggesting a direct correlation, although some of the hardcover pages were almost as pathetic as toilet paper. It turns out that the paper shortage predates the pandemic. According to a printing executive named Danny Adlerman, who was interviewed in a Forbes magazine article in June of 2019, paper shortages are nothing new. They tend to cycle somewhat unpredictably through the industry. But in 2019, the paper industry experienced what Adlerman called “a genuine confluence of events” that affected the paper supply. According to Adlerman, these included the shutdown and consolidation of some paper mills; single stream recycling making used paper less clean and harder to recycle; and an increased demand for recyclable packaging (cardboard, paper) in order to reduce plastic use, which shifted paper producers’ focus. In fact, by 2019 paper availability had actually begun to affect some book publication dates.

When asked how he thought the paper shortage might play out in the next year—that is, 2020—Adlerman said, “Ultimately, I think this situation will relax itself into a more tenable climate, but as the causes were many and varied this time around, so must the solutions be.” He was quick to point out that he wasn’t suggesting we recycle less or use more “virgin stock” from freshly cut trees. One thing he was looking forward to was better production of recycled paper. Instead, as you can imagine, things only got worse.

A July 2022 news item from the Craft Industry Alliance, an organization serving “craft industry professionals” like makers, suppliers, designers, and writers, reported that “a paper shortage is walloping the literate world.” They, too, cited paper mill shutdowns, as well as shipping delays, worker illnesses, and “other pandemic-related stresses,” including the boom in online ordering, which “inspired a shift from paper to cardboard manufacturing.” They repeated a statistic from a Seattle Times piece reporting that North America’s paper production was down one-fifth from 2019, when Adlerman had been interviewed by Forbes.

I also learned that smaller businesses were, not surprisingly, hit harder than bigger ones, and publishers were learning how to plan projects farther out and, in some cases, print fewer copies. “Paper shortages are the stuff of nightmares: the kind of existential threat to commercial printing companies that keeps owners and managers up at night,” begins one news article in the industry publication Printing Impressions.

As a reader, I found all of this information strangely reassuring. Publishers aren’t just trying to stick it to readers out of greed or cluelessness. They actually might be printing their books on subpar paper because if they don’t, those books won’t be printed at all.

I was keenly aware as I slid some of those hardcovers back on the bookstore shelf that I was rejecting a fellow writer’s work due to something they couldn’t control. I shuddered to think about that happening to a book of my own. I might still read those books eventually, of course, as e-books or library books or audiobooks. But the sales bottom line still matters for every writer, and having the book you worked so hard to write printed on paper fit for the bottom of a birdcage is devastating.

Nevertheless, I have more sympathy for publishers now that I know what’s behind the subpar paper—though I hope they won’t use this as an excuse to continue printing on poor quality paper as a cost-savings measure even when better paper becomes available. At the same time, I’m thinking about the environmental implications of my own desire for heavier, fresher, smoother paper. I had no inkling that my annoyance in the bookstore that day would lead me here, to the conclusion that there’s a downside to demanding the paper I desire.