On Jun 5, Steven Brust said: >At 10:05 PM 6/4/2002 -0700, Frank Mayhar wrote: > >>One word: Remaindering. A pernicious practice that is one of the things >>killing the paperback industry. > >Well, remaindering *is* pretty silly, but it's been going on for a lot >longer than the paperback crunch. It's still black necromancy. >And in a sense, it actually helps: it >permits smaller bookstores to take a chance with unknown authors. They >know they can buy a box or so without risk. The end may justify the means, though. I saw Dreamhaven doing that, sigh. In a weird way, mass-market paperbacks had the problem of digital copyright before digital got anywhere: the cost of the materials was _considered_ negligible (don't know if it actually was, as it is in digital); it's having that author's words you're paying for. >No, Rachel explained what has caused the real crunch. I wish my parents could spell. >Instead of a lot of distributors working their areas and responding >("Hey, Jim, give us more westerns next time; people around here seem to >like westerns") you have Ingrams, which gives you (the drug store with >a book rack, or the airport, or whatever) the top ten NYT bestsellers >and a few others that they pick out. I was going to say that that was a while back (drugstore and airport racks being of any use) and that the paperback market survived the collapse of the ID channels, and then I realized I didn't know if that was actually the case. Did sales actually survive, and the later consolidations kill them; or did they never quite recover, and stagger woozily to their extended demise? Rachael -- Rachael From the Dilbert Newsletter: Lininger "You should talk to her. rachael@ She is a minefield of information." daedala.net