The inexpensive ‘Fundamentalist’
Barnes & Noble is remaindering the Reluctant Fundamentalist hardcover for four bucks, clearing out stock before the softcover which releases April 8th.
Publishers remainder or pulp books which aren’t selling because it saves them taxes on inventory treated as depreciating assets:
An unforeseen side effect of this [tax] decision was that it became less profitable for publishers to keep slowly but regularly selling books in print (their backlist). Some argue that this has made it harder for midlist authors to make a living because books tend to be remaindered or pulped and go out of print more quickly. [Link]
… how have publishers adapted to Thor Power? By setting print runs closer to the level of advance orders, and by purging inventory… This results in title proliferation… and a higher return rate. That means writers must write more, and sell more often, in order to survive. [Link]
It’s remarkable that you could radically expand the breadth of human thought available in print by tweaking the tax code. The status quo makes tech companies’ book scanning projects all the more important.
on Thursday, March 6th, 2008, 11:31 pm in Economics, Literature › 
Email this
› 
Facebook this
› 
Reddit this
› Link
› Reader links
I believe that the $3.99 hardcovers are technically “remaindered” already. But you probably know more about it than me…
I wonder if there is a way to find out what books are officially on the remaindered list?
Thanks for the correction.
I’d imagine it’s multiple lists, one per publisher.
i’ve never heard of ‘remaindering’ before…makes me think of long division. this will be my word of the day
u know best place to buy great books at a cheap prize is Library book sales( a bag of books for 5 dollars ,soft cover books for 50 cents). Indianapolis public library has sales 3-4 times a year..tomorrow they have a sale in indianapolis library service center..sometimes old people also hold books sales and I love going there and money goes to charities..
I bought so many good books including some rushdie books there..
best part about online books is I bought my dad his fav. author James Micheners books published in 1950s which are totally out of publication for really cheap prize…My dad was so so happy with those rare unavailable books that I owe that happiness to amazon online book sales and book sellers..
I even recently bought a rare japanese toy dragonball z my nephew wanted on amazon online..
online book shopping is cool too..
i’m so old school when it comes to shopping online, i don’t. there is no way i’d purchase anything over the internet. just don’t think it’s secure enough yet. i’m also a credit card hater, but that’s another story.
but i know what you are talking about when you speak of the book scanning projects. and i’m all for it.