Quote:
Originally Posted by EricDP
And for eBooks that don't sell, at least you don't have a warehouse full of them to deal with. How much does the industry lose in unsold print copies, and the cost of building/leasing warehouses?
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Unsold print copies are part of the "reserve against returns" line in the book's P&L.
Depending on the book, the costs can be substantial, though I don't see the cost of warehousing being significant. It's not like the industry is constantly building new warehouses or leasing additional space to accommodate returns. The warehousing is to hold newly published books to be distributed. Returns may go there, but see below.
Only hardcovers are actually returned, and those go back out again for sales on remaindered tables. Paperbacks have the covers stripped, and
those get returned. The bodies of the books
should end up as landfill, but often wind up for sale really cheap to those who just want to read the book. Publishers are
not happy about this, and PB books tend to have legal notices on the copyrights page about it.
Should ebooks ever take over completely, with print editions no longer published, these costs will go away. Meanwhile, they're there, and constitute part of the budget for the book.
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Dennis