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Paperback books that don’t sell are discarded so as not to compete with long tail purchases but hard cover books are expensive enough in terms of production and
by bradleyjg 5y ago
Paperback books that don’t sell are discarded so as not to compete with long tail purchases but hard cover books are expensive enough in terms of production and distribution that the end up getting discounted instead.
- b3morales 5y agoCan you expand on this? Do you mean a paperback copy of a book somehow competes with a later sale of the same book?
- echelon 5y agoSupply and demand. If you decrease the supply, the small existing demand will pay more.
- Robotbeat 5y agoWhen suppliers destroy supply, it makes a good argument for piracy
- runj__ 5y agoI somewhat agree with you but I really do like some kind of curation, even if that curation is done by the market. There's nothing inherently good with a surplus of bad goods. I'd prefer a copy of "The Library of Babel" vs. all of the books inside of it.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y agoYes - they don't want to flood the used book market with paperbacks, which would compete with future sales of the same title. If you're a bookstore and a hardcover doesn't sell, you have to return the whole book to the publisher. If a paperback doesn't sell, you just have to rip off the front cover and return that to the publisher. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripped_book https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripped_book
- laurencerowe 5y agoThat's definitely not true for all paperback books. I often buy remaindered paperbacks at Dog Eared and Alley Cat bookshops in San Francisco. You can tell they're remaindered because they're marked with felt tip. When I lived in the UK, Fopp was a great source for them (along with discount films and music.)
- bradleyjg 5y agoMy knowledge of the subject goes back to a high school job in a bookstore. Things may well have changed since then. Back then we ripped the covers off mass market paperback and sent them back to the publisher for a credit. The books were supposed to be discarded but you did from time to time come across a paperback book with no cover at a thrift store or similar, so clearly that didn’t always happen.
- Retric 5y agoI’ve had plenty of paperback books lose their covers fairly quickly, seeing used books without covers doesn’t mean they had their covers intentionally ripped off.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- laurencerowe 5y agoThe remaindered paperbacks I bought may have been higher quality trade paperback versions rather than the regular mass market ones which get pulped.
- cafard 5y agoRight. Many years ago, I worked for a department store or two that carried books. Some of those missing the front cover ended up where employees could take them. I suppose that this was not supposed to happen, but it did.