It’s worth noting that it’s not “paperbacks” in general but the mass-market paperbacks in particular (despite the headline). The print book market (excluding technical books and textbooks which are a whole separate thing) had effectively three segments: hardcovers, trade paperback and mass-market paperback. The distinction between TP and MMP comes down to price, production quality and to a lesser degree target audience. A trade paperback will have somewhat larger pages, typically the same size as the corresponding hardcover and often printed from the same plates as the hardcover. Mass-market paperbacks were typically smaller, on cheaper paper¹ with smaller margins. Back when there were racks of books in supermarkets and drugstores, these were all MMPs and while bookstores would sell MMPs, they are geared more towards TP and HC sales since the lower price also came with lower margins (hardcovers make the most money for everyone involved and MMPs the least).

Since a large fraction of MMPs sold were genre fiction and a large fraction of that has shifted to ebooks (romance readers were the biggest early adopters of the kindle), along with the decline of book sales outside of bookstore channels, the loss of MMPs isn’t the cultural cataclysm the article claims. Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the trade paperback space has expanded. It’s not uncommon for a new writer’s first book to be released as a trade paperback rather than hardcover (Emily St John Mandel is one notable example of a writer who debuted in TP but had later books released in HC).

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1. It was typically pure wood-pulp paper with high acid content, leading these books to be described as “pulp novels” and since a large fraction of these were genre novels, genre fiction would be referred to as pulp fiction and yes, that’s where the movie gets its name from.