Bad news from yesterday's Boston Globe:
If you're a baby boomer stinging from being blamed for Social Security's problems, now there's something else that's your fault: the decline of the mass-market paperback book.
No, it's not your taste, it's your eyes. Admit it: You just can't read that tiny type any more.
I'm not quite ready for reading glasses yet, but my eye guy tells me my day is coming. So I'm glad that my home team, Steeple Hill Books (part of the Harlequin family), is one of the publishers who has figured out that they need to offer us aging boomers something easier to read before we get frustrated with all that squinting and give up on mass-market paperbacks. With the softer sales the industry has seen in the last couple of years, publishers can ill afford to lose the age group which is now represented by the largest piece on the pie chart of romance-buyers.
Offering a larger-print option on mass-market paperbacks is a smart move, and one that I think will go a long way toward slowing the current decline in book sales.
Now if they could just figure out a way to keep the boomers from dying off.
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