Publishers would be better off if books weren’t returnable, wouldn’t we?
Well, no, I don’t think we would. We’ve all heard that full return privileges can induce booksellers to try a book about which they’re unsure. And that’s obviously true. There are costs to the bookseller in returning a book, but not so many that they won’t take a modest risk.
But what about more predictable books? Because you can’t know how many more copies will sell out of which locations, there will always be some books left over, even on bestsellers or predictable backlist performers. These are the bulk of what is now returned. Someone somewhere is going to bear the cost of those extra books. Because booksellers have so much more power than publishers in the book business, that cost is going to be borne almost exclusively by the publishers.
If we have to bear the cost, either in the form of higher discounts, or as returns and credits, we might as well get as much as possible from it. Returns offer publishers something to sell (as hurts or as remainders), and information. There are lots of ways to make money from a returned book, if it’s in decent condition. Small publishers have found that they can sell small numbers of damaged copies and remainders quite well through Amazon’s Marketplace and various other second hand book venues. You can also donate books (and take the tax deduction for donating) to foreign ESL programs (novels) or to other worthy causes. You can strip and tip hardbacks to make the first run of a trade paperback re-issue.
As for the information to be found in returned books: Were the books even unpacked and put on the shelf? Were they taken off the shelf and examined (and scuffed)? Were they thumbed through? At what stage in the buying process did the examination stop? Can we learn anything from examining the returned book?
Or is there a pattern in the over-ordering and under-ordering? Which demographics did well with the books and which didn’t? Is there a correlation to your marketing and publicity? To your author’s background and travel? Something else to be learned?
In short, we’re going to be paying for the average bookstore’s average excess number of copies. At least the current system gives us something back. And it charges the publishers whose books are worst the most, rather than making us all pay an average rate. Are we really sure we want to change this system?
What about the environmental impact of producing these books, not to mention shipping them back and forth?
Thank you for commenting.
Yes, returns do exact a toll upon our environment. But that toll is more complex than it looks.
When we talk about eliminating returns, we aren’t talking about eliminating excess books. We don’t have a clue about how to do that. We’re talking about denying bookstores the right to return them. Unneeded books would still be produced.
In addition, the total number of books sold, especially the riskier ones that are likely to foment positive social change, would drop. We’d have cut book production and sales, but not by the RIGHT (the unwanted) books.
As for the shipping of returns, I think it’s pretty low impact. You see, if you eliminate it, you probably don’t change the number of delivery trips to either the stores or the central warehouses. And the trip itself has a bigger impact than the incremental weight of the returned books.
Good question, though.
I don’t agree with your statement at all because you’ve given no alternative to what happens if bookstores had to pay for returns rather than the publisher. Put that in terms negative to the publisher and perhaps the argument would work. I lost 1000s of dollars last year from returns, and I’d like to hear what life might be like if stores Couldn’t return things.
That was in the other entry on returns. But basically, given the severe power imbalance between publishers and bookstores, publishers are going to bear almost all of the costs of those books that don’t sell, either in extra discounts, or in returns, or in some similar way.
If we get the books back, then the publishers that sell the right books into the right places, and make the right marketing decisions won’t be penalized for the mistakes of others, AND we’ll all have the books back when they really don’t sell. This opens up other options for us, including disposing of them via firesales or eBay, or . . . as well as offering us further information about our market.