For many years, trade paperbacks were mainly used to reprint older comic-book stories that were no longer available to the average reader.
[6] Paul Levitz of Vulture commented that "these collections of reprints were united by their title character or series but only accidentally had any commonality of story or theme, and their existence as books was clearly an afterthought".
At the time that Moore signed the deal, which was [before] the Dark Knight Returns was collected, the idea of a comic book staying in print was absurd.
[11]: 15 In 2015, Polygon highlighted that "though this was far less common a decade ago, pretty much every monthly comic out there right now is eventually collected into trade paperback or hardcover edition that prints several issues in one package".
A common practice is to include an art gallery featuring the artwork of the original comic book covers from which the series was compiled.
A significant benefit of the trade paperback version is that it is often available in bookstores, from smaller booksellers to the larger suppliers, and other retailers that do not normally carry comic books.
[21][22][23] In 2018, Screen Rant highlighted that "publishers and retailers traditionally ignore the sales of trade paperbacks when it comes to deciding whether or not a specific title is doing well.
[16] In 2019, Bleeding Cool emphasized that "in recent years, collected issues/trade paperbacks are more popular and profitable than monthly comic book periodicals.
[28][29] Attempts to catalogue and circulate single-issue comics can pose difficult problems[30][31] and the durability of the trade paperback format is an important consideration for longevity and collection development in public and school libraries.
Trade paperbacks "are also the primary culprit in people's confusion of the lexicon, since 'TPBs make up 95% of what many librarians refer to as graphic novels'".