Quote:
Originally Posted by Pardoz
You misunderstand. Returns are called 'returns' for a reason - they're returned (either the whole book or just the cover) to the publisher for a complete refund. The only 'sunk cost' for the retailer is overhead and perhaps opportunity cost (if something else had been in that spot on the shelf and sold, they would have made money).
Industry-wide, returns average between 30 and 40 percent of books printed; returns of under 15% are exceptional.
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To offer corroboration, when my wife was working as a manager at Barnes & Noble, the most frequent complaints I heard were about returns. There seemed to be an exceptionally large number of "character" customers who had a habit of buying a bunch of books and returning most or all of them nearly every time. They had to ban more than one customer due to this habit. The biggest problem was that the 30 day return policy guaranteed the original price, but blockbuster shelf cycles are so short that it wasn't uncommon for books being returned to have had their prices dropped to bargain status resulting a net loss to the store.
Abuse of returns could get expensive. Those people should learn to use the library!