newer != better

I went to the local bookstore today to try and purchase a copy of H.S.T.'s Hell's Angels, since it is one of those books that I had started a while ago and never made it all the way though and I am ashamed of this fact. I was looking for a normal, compact trade paperback book, the kind that we are all familiar with, sized around 7"x4". All I found was a larger format book, around 8"x5". Looking inside, the text is larger and more spaced out, looking like what they usually give grade school kids so they are not intimidated by lots of small type, or old people who have bad eyesight. I can only imagine focus group testing with "average" Americans done by publishing agencies, complaining about how hard books are to read, demanding larger, friendlier type. I put down this new book, and promptly went to the nearest used bookstore to look for a normal trade paperback with nice yellowed pages and a dated cover design. In other words, a normal book.