The biggest remainder show in the world, CIROBE (the Chicago International Remainder and Overstock Book Exposition) had its tenth and biggest annual convention the weekend of November 3rd-5th 2000.

On November 6th, Amazon.com started soliciting for people to list used and "collectible" copies on the same page as Amazon’s new book listing. This should expand the used book market and also its supply, but also means that a lot of remaindered and "hurt" copies will show up. Amazon’s effect on the remainder and "hurts" businesses, and on the future of books in general, depends on how the publishers react to a juxtaposition of product that is at best rude.

For the first justification for remaindering was always that it sold the book in a different market, put it in the hands of a reader that otherwise wouldn’t look at it. So a book would be "now in paperback at 14.95!" while the 27.95 hardback was on a remainder table ten feet away at 6.98, but the customer for one usually wouldn’t notice the other. The money paid for one wouldn’t lessen the money paid for the other, and of course remaindered copies (by contract) pay no royalties to the author, so their cost is less.

The second justification for remaindering, and the cause of the huge remainder supply of the last twenty years, is the Thor tax decision of 1979 and subsequent rulings that further penalize holding inventory. The publisher pays taxes based on his inventory value, and since Thor was passed he can’t "write down" his stock until he actually sells some off cheap to establish a lower market value. So, rather than traditional "remaindering", where one sells off all "remaining" copies and so makes the title out-of-print, it’s much more common now to sell off an "overstock" and use the resultant low values to write down the retained back-list title.

But of course the best way to please the tax people is not to have the back-list inventory in the first place, so Amazon has added to the reasons for publishers not to publish physical books past their first "book of the month" debut. E-books and books printed on-demand will occur faster than otherwise, pleasing the tax people while frustrating the remainder dealers and buyers and those readers who appreciate the physical book, the book as an art object and not just a bunch of sentences.

The publishers probably won’t react until Barnes and Noble does. B & N has background in the used book business itself, and currently links to out-of-print titles from associated dealers, usually at 20% more than from those dealers approached from www.addall.com or www.bookfinder.com.. But they don’t currently list used copies of in-print titles, and their remainder listings are not next to their new book listings. If B & N does decide to mix the markets as Amazon is doing, it will probably do a better job, but it might decide that execution of the necessary tasks would also kill the publishers. Decisions, decisions.

Amazon’s listings, by the way, cost the dealer 15% of the selling price plus $.99 a book, or 15% plus $40 a month for multiple listings. So if you see something on Amazon, compare it to listings on addall.com and bookfinder.com :Amazon’s drop-down condition description list is woefully inadequate, but the dealer can add a few words. You may find the same idiosyncratic listing for less, and in this case the shipper is the same - the original dealer. But also look at shipping prices and methods. Oh, and if someone actually uses Amazon’s condition category of "Collectable-Acceptable" look at their words very carefully, and then probably pass anyway. "Collectable-Acceptable" would make a better Milli-Vanilli title than anything else.

Amazon’s action and Barnes & Noble’s likely reaction (and possibly Borders’ too- the brothers started in the used book business ) will probably make print runs shorter and so less wasteful from an accounting point of view, but is probably bad news from publishers’ and independent bookstores’ points of view. A sensible publisher will only remainder a title in order to help his overall business, not to gut his back-list, and will pay a pulper to destroy skids of "hurts" rather than be paid by a dealer to preserve same, if he fears they’ll turn up in the same market as their non-creased counterparts.

For independent bookstores, this probably hurts why they go to CIROBE and also why they buy remainders in the first place: to provide something the chains and the monolith don’t have They will still have the physical book they’ve put into inventory, but Amazon will list thousands more without having bought them - Amazon’s "inventory" will all be "drop shipped": shipped directly from the real supplier to the real customer.

So, in the independent bookstore, the savvy customer can handle the book, look at the illustrations, treasure (or despise) the paper, admire the dust jacket, assess the binding and wonder how long it will all last.

As always, feedback is more than welcome at mike@mcintyreandmoore.com