Excerpt:
It has been well established practice in the book industry for the past seventy years that publishers accept unsold books as returns from booksellers. While it is not generally known when the practice specifically began, one primary source, Bill Gladstone, stated that returnable programs began with his father at Simon and Schuster during the Great Depression as an incentive for booksellers.1 Gladstone went on to state that the practice was “the single most detrimental policy in the history of book selling, one from which the industry … never recovered.”2 If Mr. Gladstone’s assessment of this practice is true, then why would it be the mainstream modus operandi for so many decades? More importantly, if the practice is detrimental to the industry, how can returnable programs be retired in favor of a method that works for the industry as a whole?
A returnable program for books, magazines, and newspapers is a deeply-rooted de facto process in the publishing world. It is common practice for booksellers to return unsold copies, allowing them to merchandise books en masse and attract more sales. The industry maintains that a higher quantity of books is needed to trigger additional sales and that when too few are ordered, potential sales are lost. This type of marketing encourages booksellers to order more books than they will sell for the sole purpose of merchandising them in the store in a visually appealing way.3 Studies have shown that customers respond strongly to these merchandising techniques and tend to buy more when more books are displayed.
