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Dirty little secret's about any industry

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LeungJan

LeungJan

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Saw this on reddit,

Some pretty good information there!

Large chain bookstores: so so so many perfectly good books get thrown out...
Mass market paperbacks are cheap to manufacture and get shipped out in huge volumes. For some publishers (particularly ones that put out new mysteries or romances quarterly) when the bookstore wants it off the shelf to make room for something new, it's just not worth the cost of taking them back and finding someone else to sell it. But they don't want anyone getting them for free. So as a bookstore employee I spent hours ripping the front and back covers off of books, then tearing the book at least in half so that no one could read it later. The covers get sent back to the publishers, and the books that could have been donated to a library or school get put in a locked recycling container out back. A manager had to come back and check my work to make sure the books were not left intact.
I almost cried the first time I had to rip up a load of kid's books (in a city with high child poverty rates and underfunded schools).
Click to expand...

What is a "dirty little (or big) secret" about an industry that you have worked in, that people outside the industry really ought to know? : AskReddit
 
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Jonleehacker

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What's even sadder than that, is the large supermarkets do the same thing with food. When I was a kid there was always a section of discounted items that were starting to go bad, now they just toss it into the dumpster, meanwhile the foodbank and homeless shelters are begging for donations.

Crazy world we live in.
 
S

skylizard

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Wasting so many books like that is just sad :nonod:
I used to work retail for a company that sold bath products. We had the same policy about destroying something. If it didn't sell or was returned (even unopened) it had to be discarded. And the manager had to walk out with you and make sure it was discarded into a locked trash can. It was sick the amount of stuff they threw out on a daily basis. So much waste!
 
S

stranger

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Jonleehacker said:
What's even sadder than that, is the large supermarkets do the same thing with food. When I was a kid there was always a section of discounted items that were starting to go bad, now they just toss it into the dumpster, meanwhile the foodbank and homeless shelters are begging for donations.

Crazy world we live in.
Click to expand...

I watch the same situation in my poor country too. The damn stupid eagerness drives our F*cking world to the hell.
 
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Milkanic

Milkanic

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Jonleehacker said:
What's even sadder than that, is the large supermarkets do the same thing with food. When I was a kid there was always a section of discounted items that were starting to go bad, now they just toss it into the dumpster, meanwhile the foodbank and homeless shelters are begging for donations.

Crazy world we live in.
Click to expand...

buddy of mine just biked across America and lived off dumpster food.
Food: How I cycled 4700 miles eating food from the Earth
 
liquidglass

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Does any one else here smell a business opportunity?

I don't have time or the interest currently to pursue it so I'll throw out a free idea and if someone wants to make it work then great!

The bookstores throwing out books are losing the money they spent on said books, the publisher doesn't care because they've been paid by the store already. So open up a BM shop or online that specializes in selling these books at low costs. You work out agreements with the big book stores to buy a limited number of books from them before they are destroyed and sell them at half the normal cost. Good luck!
 

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