I was a board member for a book co-op once. Up until that point, I also demonized any trashing of books. But I quickly realized that it is almost necessary in some cases. Our bookstore accepted donations, which opens up a huge can of worms that leads to book recycling:
Many, many books simply suck or are outdated. There are thousands of writers that just stink at writing, and therefore there are books from one, five, 10, 20 years ago that nobody should ever read and that nobody will ever buy. In the same vein, there are tons of books based on outdated research and outdated concepts that simply become obsolete. All of these types of books are regularly recycled.
Softbacks. Soft cover books (not tradebacks, which are the higher quality paper back books you see) are the cheapest version of a book you will find for sale, and they simply don't hold value that well compared to hard covers. So a softback of any given popular book is pretty much worthless after the cover gets all bent up and pages folded.
Something you may not know about a lot of stores that carry magazines - unsold magazines have their covers ripped off and are literally tossed in the recycling. The covers are returned to the distributors to prove they weren't sold, but they don't want to actually deal with the unsold paper. If it hasn't sold within a couple of months of being new, it is even less likely that anybody will purchase them.
I don't think people realize just how many copies of books exist out there in the world. When we opened up our shop to donations, the vast majority of books that people wanted to give us for free were effectively unsellable. It's not like we were starvijg for copies of To Kill A Mockingbird or Walden or what have you. And it's not like we could store thousands of books nobody wanted - so we recycled. It isn't some Fahrenheit 451 scenario, some books just have shorter lifespans than others, and frankly some things shouldn't be captured in print at all.
Edit: one more point I should make that I forgot while drunkenly typing this up last night - for books that may not be profitable to sell for whatever reason but that are also in decent shape and relatively desirable, like To Kill A Mockingbird, we would donate them on to a local group that gave out books to the community for free. We would also sell certain books in support of that group. So community members that wanted to clear out books could trust us to sort them and make sure they found a home if possible.
DragonsOverNYC on February 15th, 2020 at 06:10 UTC »
I love this!
walkinglost on February 15th, 2020 at 06:24 UTC »
In their post-apocalyptic bunker?
PinstripeMonkey on February 15th, 2020 at 06:56 UTC »
I was a board member for a book co-op once. Up until that point, I also demonized any trashing of books. But I quickly realized that it is almost necessary in some cases. Our bookstore accepted donations, which opens up a huge can of worms that leads to book recycling:
Many, many books simply suck or are outdated. There are thousands of writers that just stink at writing, and therefore there are books from one, five, 10, 20 years ago that nobody should ever read and that nobody will ever buy. In the same vein, there are tons of books based on outdated research and outdated concepts that simply become obsolete. All of these types of books are regularly recycled.
Softbacks. Soft cover books (not tradebacks, which are the higher quality paper back books you see) are the cheapest version of a book you will find for sale, and they simply don't hold value that well compared to hard covers. So a softback of any given popular book is pretty much worthless after the cover gets all bent up and pages folded.
Something you may not know about a lot of stores that carry magazines - unsold magazines have their covers ripped off and are literally tossed in the recycling. The covers are returned to the distributors to prove they weren't sold, but they don't want to actually deal with the unsold paper. If it hasn't sold within a couple of months of being new, it is even less likely that anybody will purchase them.
I don't think people realize just how many copies of books exist out there in the world. When we opened up our shop to donations, the vast majority of books that people wanted to give us for free were effectively unsellable. It's not like we were starvijg for copies of To Kill A Mockingbird or Walden or what have you. And it's not like we could store thousands of books nobody wanted - so we recycled. It isn't some Fahrenheit 451 scenario, some books just have shorter lifespans than others, and frankly some things shouldn't be captured in print at all.
Edit: one more point I should make that I forgot while drunkenly typing this up last night - for books that may not be profitable to sell for whatever reason but that are also in decent shape and relatively desirable, like To Kill A Mockingbird, we would donate them on to a local group that gave out books to the community for free. We would also sell certain books in support of that group. So community members that wanted to clear out books could trust us to sort them and make sure they found a home if possible.