Is our Instagram era literally shrinking books? A local bookseller weighs in

In the property of Ozempic, the buzziest hardcovers are getting smaller — and gaffe close into your Baggu. At Book Soup successful West Hollywood, the bestselling hardcover fabrication show is marked with laminated cards that denote the book’s spot successful the apical 10, with each 1 chopped snugly into the fashionable hardcover framework of 6-by-9 inches. But lately, much of the books rising to the apical deterioration the placard noticeably looser.

I should know, I enactment astatine Book Soup truthful I walk a batch of clip staring astatine this show and tin archer you, the reply to this occupation is decidedly to people retired smaller cards chopped to the small sister “trim size” of 5-by-8 inches — oregon 5½-by-8¼ to beryllium specific.

While the New York Times bestsellers from 2025 skew successful favour of the 6-by-9 trim, the popularity of 5-by-8 books appears to beryllium connected the rise. Current utilizers of the smaller chopped see the buzzy Vanderbilt heir Belle Burden’s “Strangers,” George Saunders’ darkly humorous “Vigil” Lena Dunham’s millennial-tinged tell-all “Famesick” and the infamously tablet-sized “Transcription” from Ben Lerner.

1/5

“Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage” by Belle Burden  (The Dial Press)

2/5

“Famesick: A Memoir” by Lena Dunham  (Random House)

3/5

“Vigil: A Novel” by George Saunders  (Random House)

4/5

“Transcription: A Novel” by Ben Lerner  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

5/5

“Lost Lambs” by writer Madeline Cash  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Gretchen Achilles is the manager of interior plan astatine Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Achilles precocious implemented the 5-by-8 chopped for 1 of this year’s breakout hits, “Lost Lambs” by Madeline Cash. “It’s a tone,” she says. “Smaller trim sizes person an intimacy. … You privation to echo what’s going connected successful the substance arsenic an acquisition for the reader.”

According to Achilles, FSG often implements the 5-by-8 trim size. She said that magnitude is the No. 1 origin erstwhile deciding to employment it, followed by genre. She listed literate fiction, memoir, biography, and effort collections arsenic the defining genres of the smaller size books.

Caroline Mason is simply a writer successful New York whose debut caller “An Endless Cycle of Evenings” from Hyperion Avenue is slated for 2027; she runs the Instagram relationship @literarycrushes. Mason described a 5-by-8 hardcover arsenic shorthand for a circumstantial publication she seeks retired erstwhile she is successful a bookstore due to the fact that it often signals a character-driven novel. “It’s my favourite benignant of book,” Mason says. She adds that it’s besides Instagram-friendly.

“Holding the publication up to instrumentality a photograph of it is easier,” she says with a laugh. “Although I bash sometimes inactive driblet it.”

Dahlia de la Vega is an L.A.-based Bookstagrammer who runs the leafage @ofpagesandprint. According to De la Vega, she finds the shrunken books much approachable. “When I beryllium down to work a tiny hardcover, it astir feels similar I’m speechmaking a journal,” she says. “Whereas erstwhile I work a ample hardcover, it astir feels similar I request a diary to jot down notes astir what’s happening.”

Ethan Mann, my workfellow and a supervisor astatine Book Soup, told maine helium remembers the spot helium was some mentally and physically erstwhile helium purchased a 5-by-8 hardcover transcript of “The Parade” by Dave Eggers. (Right earlier the pandemic struck astatine CSUN field store astatine Cal-State Northridge). “It’s easier to connect relevance to the circumstantial consciousness of [the book] due to the fact that it seems 1 of a kind,” helium says.

Mann adds that hardcovers are sometimes a pugnacious merchantability connected the floor. They are often derided for their cost, and customers state they volition hold till the paperback comes out. But the smaller hardcover has the payment of fitting into astir immoderate bag.

Esther Margolis is simply a publishing seasoned and the laminitis of Newmarket Press. She says that the 5-by-8 hardcover is thing new. According to Margolis, the smaller trim size was antecedently the manufacture modular for U.S.-based publishing houses, and immoderate fluctuation is owed to the improvement of printing technology.

“Unlike for mass-market paperbacks, hardcover books were shelved, truthful it didn’t substance that the books were antithetic sizes,” Margolis says. “They didn’t person to acceptable into a pocket.”

The popularity of the 5-by-8 hardcover is, astatine the precise least, indicative of a displacement successful what I witnesser consumers astatine Book Soup seeking out. With societal media making it easier than ever to link implicit the enactment of reading, oregon looking similar you are reading, screen plan and presumption — and however it cuts done the sound of the attraction economy— is possibly a origin too.

“A tiny hardback is similar a Labubu,” my co-worker Mann says. “ The feeling successful your hands isn’t conscionable astir books — it’s astir each cute things. ... We similar tiny things we tin control.”

The occurrence of the publishing manufacture could ne'er remainder connected the tiny shoulders of the tiny hardcover. It whitethorn not adjacent correspond immoderate changes successful production. But connected the bestsellers show astatine your favourite section indie, it represents the tiny pleasance of palming a near-pocket-size publication successful your hands.

And, yes, possibly Instagrammability too.

Messinger is simply a writer successful L.A. who runs the Substack adumbmessinger.