Bookstores follow an antiquated distribution scheme, where books that don’t sell are the publisher’s responsibility, not the bookstore’s. From Quest for Best Seller Creates a Pileup Of Returned Books:
In 2003, 34% of adult hardcover books were returned to publishers, compared with 28% in 1993, says Albert N. Greco, a professor at the Fordham Graduate School of Business and a leading industry statistician. That’s more than one in three adult hardcover books that publishers edit, print, distribute and market. According to the Association of American Publishers, those returns in 2004 had a wholesale value of $801 million, up from $743 million in the prior year. It is a system nobody likes, but no one knows how to change, even though the country’s largest book retailer says it would like to try.In most other industries, manufacturers don’t have to take back products that don’t sell. If a department store can’t move a line of clothing, for example, the items are pitched at lower prices. The book industry, by contrast, has been saddled with this system since the Depression, when publishers told struggling bookstores they could return unwanted books as long as they kept ordering new titles. Returns also persist in the DVD and music businesses, and to a lesser extent in videogames.