People only just realising why airport books are 'bigger' than anywhere else

Richard Osman has revealed why airports sell books that are "bigger" than the ones that you'd find in a normal shop.

In a new episode of The Rest Is Entertainment podcast (September 18th), Richard and Marina Hyde delved into the subject of "airport editions" of books, which are often larger.

Richard, who presented Pointless and authors best-selling mystery series The Thursday Murder Club, was well placed to answer the listener's question.

He said: "It's a red herring that they are in airports at all, really. They're not really airport editions.

"Every time you do a hardback, you release books first in hardback in the UK. But across the Commonwealth, a lot of those territories do not have a culture of having hardbacks.

"In Ireland, for example, you go and they won't have hardbacks so they have what's called trade paperbacks. That is before the smaller paperback comes out, a slightly bigger, chunkier, more impressive looking book comes out which has a soft cover."

He continued: "It's the size of a hardback but it has a soft cover and it's called a trade paperback. And airports, because of their various rules on, you know, tax and all that kind of stuff are able to stock those things and so they do."

When it comes to the size, he revealed: "The reason they are bigger than a paperback would be, to deliberately, to answer the question, Rebecca, is the paperback isn't out yet.

"But the reason they have them in airports is if you're going to have something that's the size of a hardback, might as well have it with a soft cover because that's easier to carry and easier to have around."

Richard said they're "great" because they're "airport exclusives" and he always feels "quite excited" when he's at an airport and they have a trade paperback, which is slightly more expensive than a regular paperback.

He summed up the practice by saying they're simply the editions that are available in various Commonwealth countries and are sold in airports but you can't buy them anywhere else.

In other literary news, The Thursday Murder Club is currently being adapted into a Netflix film, with Richard recently photographed next to legendary film director Steven Spielberg.

The author shared the snap on his X account, formerly known as Twitter, with his 1.2 million followers, with the photo also featuring the likes of Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren and Celia Imrie.

Netflix, in promoting the photo, said: "Nothing to see here... just @richardosman, actual Steven Spielberg, and a few of their friends on the set of The Thursday Murder Club."

However, an equally iconic director is slated for the directing role, Chris Columbus, who was attached to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Home Alone and Mrs Doubtfire.