> Noam Chomsky mentions that there have been changes in the tax laws
> that have been very important in forcing a much more rapid turnover of
> unsold books. Nobody has mentioned this, though. Anyone else heard
> of it?
>
> In *The Common Good*, a collection of interviews with David
> Barsamian, he says (p. 12):
>
> I think it's mostly just plain market pressures. Bestsellers
> move fast, and it costs money to keep books around that don't
> sell very quickly. Changes in the tax laws have exacerbated the
> problem, by making it more expensive for publishers to hold
> inventory, so books tend to get remaindered much sooner.
This is quite true. In fact, since the Reagan era several big national chains have appeared that specialize in selling remaindered books. They buy by the truckload from the publishers' warehouses for probably pennies a book and sell them at 25 to 50% of cover price. Most of the people working in these companies' corporate offices know nothing about books, so the pricing and distrubution is pretty haphazard. One of the chains, Foozles, where I used to work, advertises for store managers without mentioning that it's a book store. Incompetence doesn't stop them from making money because the markups are so huge.
Most of the stores are in outlet malls away from the big cities. If you ever see one and you have some time, it's worth a look. Usually the store is poorly organized (but not so at Foozles in Pigeon Forge, TN!), but there's good stuff there. I have bought books by Chomsky and Dunayevskaya from my former employer, among many others. Never seen a Verso book there though.
Tom
Thomas Waters twaters at usit.net 1021 East Oak Hill Avenue, Knoxville TN 37917 But this wall is not real. How can it be real? It's only made of concrete and barbed wire.