Books are worthless. Here’s why.

Books are mostly trash. Every book you’ve ever met has survived against long odds to make it to your bookshelf, and even then, it’s most likely just waiting until it’s trashed. Don’t believe me?

We all know that publishers will print hundreds of thousands of, say, the latest Danielle Steele romance novel, send out piles of them to book stores far and wide, and refund those same booksellers when they get most of those books back, then recycle the books. Sometimes the publisher will issue refunds for just the covers, and the book stores will recycle the books.

A few of the books get tossed in the discount bin, some of them go to discount book stores, but a lot of them end up as pulp. It’s an old system that’s killing the publishing industry, but that’s how it works for the moment.

Then, most of the books that have been bought get read once, maybe, sit around for a little while, then get trashed or sold for a quarter at a yard sale or donated to a library which will sell them for a quarter. Those books that don’t get sold, get trashed. The books that make it this far through the gauntlet often end up in used book stores. Used book stores are selective of the books they stock, of course, favoring fancy printings, very old tomes, rare tomes, and various sorts of non-fiction. Even then, used book stores need a big stock, because their carefully selected books can languish on shelves for years until the right customer walks in. Some of the used book store stock gets culled every now and then, to make room for new acquisitions, and they either re-enter the used book circuit, or also go to the big Ikea shelf in the sky.

Such is the way of books. The vast majority of them end up in the recycling bin. I know this because I used to make my living selling used books and walked the whole cycle from beginning to end and back again.

So, when I got an outraged link from Tee Morris pointing to the story of a landlord in England inviting the public in to loot a warehouse full of 5 million books, I knew what I was looking at. He didn’t, and neither did a lot of other pissed off folks on Twitter.

The article says that the warehouse was for an “amazon supplier”, which presumably a lot of people took to mean that they were a contract distributor of new Amazon books. I don’t know if Amazon contracts out their book distribution (I bet they don’t), but that’s not what’s going on here. A lot of people got mad, thinking that publishers were just giving away new unsold stock and writing off the loss, meaning the authors get nothing. It’s not particularly uncommon for publishers to screw authors in this manner, but that’s not what’s happening.

I’d like to introduce you to the used bookstore of today. Go over to Amazon and look at absolutely any book they list. Most of those books, you can buy new, but there’s also the option to buy used copies. There are many people across the US and apparently in England that have built businesses on those little links. The businesses that survive and make a living for their owners mostly look like what you see in the pictures in the article: huge warehouses full of shelves of books. Having huge inventories like that is just the nature of the business.

Apparently, one of these huge online book dealers went bellyup, and abandoned their stock along with their lease. 5 million books, just sitting there.

So what in the HELL are you supposed to 5 million used books? The comments show that readers believe these books should be donated to charity, or given to schools, or at least be distributed in a more orderly fashion. Folks are absolutely aghast that these books are being rooted through and given away to anyone who can carry them. It’s horrible! It’s awful!

So what are we to do with all these books? Sell them? If they were easy to sell, the person who was selling these books for a living would have sold them and not gone out of business. Donate them? Imagine the cost of moving and storing 5 million books. Where would they go? A warehouse? A charity could take over the lease, or pay for a truck to move the books, and… sell the books? Again, the books are there because they didn’t sell. The landlord could trash them, but that’s a lot of books, and it’ll cost a lot of money. These books are less than worthless because something needs to be done with them, and all the options cost money, except one: give them away to people who will come and take them. It’s a win on all fronts. Some folks get free books they’ll enjoy. Other booksellers will get stock. The books will go away. Sure, it’s a little disturbing to see the books heaped up in drifts on the floor to be climbed, but so what?

What value do those books have? Only the value that someone will give them, either by selling them, or enjoying them. Books are an overabundant commodity, and most end up in the bin as worthless garbage.

Sorry about that.