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A clarification/addition to the Wikipedia article and RJWright's post:
Remaindered books, aka Bargain Books, are bought by the pallet-full from publisher warehouses. The big publishers hold quarterly or semi-annual auctions, and the big chains and outlets bid on them BY THE POUND! There is no exact guarantee of what's in the batch that you're buying, just an overview of listed titles (not quantities).
Since the chains all bid pennies on the pound, there is actually really good profit in them. My Waldenbooks store cleared a half a million NET on our bargain section - our net profit as a store was higher than all the other locals (we had cheap rent in a dying mall). And that was WITH the Buy 4 get One Free promos we ran all the time. I took out two more rows of poor genre sellers to put in more bargain tables.
And don't get me started on the MMPBKs, comics and magazines we tossed out in the mall trash EVERY week. There isn't a single mall around here that had a recycling program.
Dead tree publishing has been screwed up for decades (since the 30s Depression started the Return for Credit system). But there is always money to be made somewhere in the chain.
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