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Originally Posted by The Curious Orange  Oddly, books tend to be paperbacked in the US a lot sooner than they are in the UK. |
Not in my experience. The US market sometimes keeps books in hardcover or trade for years before going mass-market. For example, Scott Bakker, whose first novel came out in hardcover in the USA in 2003, is getting his first US paperback release only this year. GRRM's books tend to take 18 months to go to mmpb in the USA (as opposed to 12 in the UK). The other major difference is that if an author is big-selling enough, the hardcover will remain in print indefinitely, whilst in the UK the hardcover will be allowed to go out of print. Only the really massive giga-sellers, like Rowling, keep their hardcover editions in print indefinitely in the UK.