Plano, Texas » J.C. Penney will stop publishing its twice-yearly "big book" catalogs, now that customers increasingly shop online.

Instead, J.C. Penney Co. says it will publish specialty catalogs and focus its efforts online, on the Web site jcp.com and on social networks. In part, the company says it is responding to consumer habits to view catalogs more as "look books."

The company, which has operations in the Salt Lake Valley, will continue to publish its Christmas catalog and others, such as the "Little Red Book" for women's apparel and "Matters of Style" for men.

Eliminating the hefty twice-a-year catalogs will cut the company's paper use by 25 percent to 30 percent in 2010.

The Internet has made the 1,000-page shopping venue obsolete, and printing and transportation costs have been rising annually. The move also improves Penney's environmental footprint, reducing its catalog paper use by 30 percent next year.

Big book sales have been on a decline since 2000 as more shoppers turn to jcp.com. Penney's online sales hit $1 billion a year in 2006. Once 1,500 pages, Penney's Big Book dropped to well below 900 pages a few years ago.

Penney got into the catalog business in 1963 after it bought a Milwaukee company. In 1993, Penney's profit surged on expanding catalog sales as it aggressively pursued Sears' catalog customers by getting its Sears Discover cardholder list and accepting the card as payment.

In January of that year, Sears Roebuck & Co. discontinued its 106-year-old catalog, known to generations as the original big book. Sears' catalog went to 14 million households, but it had been losing money for years.

The arrival of a big book from Sears, Penney, Montgomery Ward or Spiegel were big events, especially the fall and winter books because they were studied long and hard to come up with Christmas wish lists.

The catalogs were yearbooks of American life.