paperback

A braille copy of “James and the Giant Peach” like the one Grayson lost weighs 2½ pounds and costs three times what a paperback does.

It got republished as a mass market paperback and sold nearly a million copies.

“Never judge a book by its contents,” quipped a wag in a porkpie hat as we both regarded the cover of an aging paperback guide to vitamins, for sale on a Broadway sidewalk.

And in just weeks, the paperback version of Harry’s memoir “Spare” will be published, after the hardback sold six million copies and became the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time.

By coincidence, the debate happened on the same date as the publication of a new afterword about the Gaza war in the paperback edition of my book War Made Invisible.