Mass Market Paperbacks
- Thread starter bdub76
- Start date
Bingo. Instead of sending back the actual books, retailers could just send the covers for a full refund. The publishers had to eat the cost of any unsold books.
I once visited a mass-market distribution center in Florida where I saw something no author or editor should ever see: a vast, hangar-sized assembly line where unsold paperbacks were methodically stripped of their covers before being pulped.
It was the abbatoir of author's dreams.
It's been ages since I've been to a 7-11. Weis Markets, a grocery store chain in Pennsylvania, though, has a small section of mass-market paperbacks. Almost nothing I'd want to buy, mind you. But it's there.
I bought Q-in-Law at a Rite Aid in 1991. The Waldenbooks in Lynchburg (where I lived at the time) wouldn't open for another several months.
That's how the publishing industry has worked for generations. The idea is that the publisher takes the hit if a book doesn't sell, thereby encouraging retailers to stock the book in the first place.
As I understand it, this started as a "temporary" incentive plan that long ago became permanent. And no publisher dares to be the first one to drop the return system -- because then retailers will just order all their books from the competition instead. (Think Mutual Assured Destruction. No publisher can survive dropping the system unilaterally.)
And, yes, hardcovers and trade paperbacks need to be returned in their entirety for credit, but for mass-markets, you just need to return the covers.
So, besides the final sales figures, we also used to talk about the "sell-through" rate, which was the percentage of copies that actually sold versus the percentage that were "returned."
And, yes, it's a crazy system. I remember trying to explain to my father, who sold shoes on the side:
"Let me get this straight. So, if shoestores worked like bookstores, if we ordered 200 pink tennis shoes and only sold 50, we could just send the laces back the manufacturer for a full refund?"
"Pretty much."
"That's insane."
"Tell me about it."
Overlooking the misspelling (I didn't catch it either, until I looked it up on OneLook, to get the etymology; it's one B and two Ts), the French term sounds too euphemistic to my ear, and so, for that matter, does "meat packing plant." Just say, "slaughterhouse." If I knew of a dysphemism, I'd suggest it.
Re-reading that last paragraph, and musing on words that sound too euphemistic for what they describe, I remembered an observation I made, years ago, about a notorious Nazi massacre:
But I digress. Incidentally, stripping for refunds is why you'll sometimes see a statement about not buying "stripped" paperbacks on the copyright page of a book (and that's how I first became aware of stripping).
And why, when giving best wishes to authors, wishing them "few returns" is a good thing.
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The last place I saw a paperbook spinner rack was at the Dollar Store. (I recently saw an old comic book rack at a auto repair place as a decoration, stocked with silver age comic books.)
Get such a rack secondhand, and display your collection of books in it.
That was my first Star Trek book purchase too! I was in the 6th or 7th grade and bought it through the school's book program from the Scholastic Reading Program catalog. Was that it's name? Not Weekly Reader (which I got too, at some point).Here's a little tidbit, to put the whole issue of current costs into perspective: the first Star Trek novel I bought, Spock Must Die! cost only .60 when it was published (1970).
