Untangling the Plot

The Association of American Publishers reports that in 2005, about 1.5 billion books were shipped in the United States. According to an article on the Bloomberg website, publishers have been encouraging booksellers for decades to keep their shelves well-stocked with books, believing that the more books made available, the more books would be sold.

In theory, that is. As usual, reality doesn’t always stick to the script: the Bloomberg article also mentions that out of those 1.5 billion books, nearly a third were returned to publishers. But this figure doesn’t tell the whole story. Many bookstores, eager to save on shipping costs, don’t actually send the books back. Instead, they tear off the covers of paperbacks – rendering the books “stripped” – and send them back to the publishers as proofs of purchase.

A friend of mine who worked for a large bookstore chain (and who, due to his former employment asked to remain anonymous) put it this way:

So, the covers are torn and sent, but this leaves the rest of the book--the pages, the storylines, the ideas.  These all end up in the dumpster, discarded and forgotten.  Often, but not always, the coverless books are nonetheless packed and sealed into a box, then thrown into the garbage.  This makes the practice more discrete, and makes it feel much more secretive and, frankly, dirty.

A community library in Axum, Ethiopia. In poorer communities around the world, libraries such as this one depend largely upon donated books.

It gets even more absurd. My friend also informed me that it was strict corporate policy that the books be thrown away. “There would be no recycling, no donating, no ‘dollar bin’ sales, nothing like that,” he explained.  “The garbage was the only option.” This is not just limited to stripped paperbacks either; outdated textbooks are also thrown away, with covers intact. Considering that there are community libraries in different parts of the world that rely entirely on donated textbooks, these policies can only be considered wasteful on a breathtaking scale.

Brainstorming the Next Chapter

Perhaps the most maddening thing about this whole book boondoggle is the lack of any clear explanation for these policies. The friend whom I interviewed was told that throwing away the books was corporate policy, but the reasoning behind the policy remains an enigma. Although the “stripping” of the paperback books makes some sense (to prevent unauthorized sale of a book when the money won’t go to either the publisher or the bookseller), it doesn’t explain why a book that is not selling has to be destroyed instead of, say, donated. Why not send them to one of the afore-mentioned community libraries? Why not give them to a needy library in the U.S.?

But an even more obvious question comes up when looking at the statistics about returned books: why print so many in the first place? That is a question that is finally being brought to light. The Bloomberg article centers around a new imprint of HarperCollins which will distribute books to booksellers on a non-returnable basis. This new HarperCollins imprint joins already existing efforts such as the Green Partnership Program, which sends carbon-neutral, discounted and non-returnable book shipments to 30 independent retailers around the country. There’s still a long way to go before these initiatives significantly change the entire industry, but if fewer books are printed and returned, fewer books are thrown away. It’s a start.

Printing and shipping fewer books is all fine and good, but not entirely satisfying.  In Hindu and Muslim societies in South Asia it's considered taboo even to throw books on the floor or dirty them in any way, and yet here in the U.S. the trashing and pulping of books is an ingrained industry practice.  Even if books are another commodity at the end of the day, do they have to be so blatantly...commodified?  Is there any way we as readers and consumers can have some impact so that books are read and cherished, even if they don't sell within a certain timeframe?  There's got to be a way to turn the page on this rather depressing story.