Assortments
Many remainder wholesalers
and hurts sorters build assortments. These can be based on category, quantity,
publisher, format, or any criteria their customer specifies. The most
common assortments I see are based on quantity, wherein everything received on
a truckload or group of truckloads that did not exceed 5 or 10 copies gets put
into skids and either sold to the highest bidder or at a fixed price per book.
Nearly as common are the assortments sold to mass merchants and supermarkets,
packed in retail displays which can be unwrapped and placed in the retail
environment without any other handling.
Bargain Books
Bargain books include everything described here, but most often when booksellers mention bargain books they are talking about books which are published to be sold at bargain prices. These are books produced by old school remainder-wholesalers-turned-publishers to fill the gaps left by huge hits in the remainder market after they sell out. For example, the Wordsworth Classics series, all classics and reference works of past centuries, are all high quality reprints, most meant to sell between $4.99 and $14.99. A few of my customers prefer these to anything else and order frequently. You should try everything because what sells depends on what you put in front of your customers. Obviously the guys that buy these by the ton are doing it for a reason. What's the reason for not buying them?
Condition
This is something of an expansion of the "Hurts" entry below. Condition notes vary depending on who is writing the notes. Some wholesalers call anything mint if it does not have a "remainder mark" and is clean and tight. Others will only refer to those books which have arrived at their warehouses in publishers' sealed original cases and have remained so until sold as mint. I refer to hurts from reliable sources as "remainder marked, otherwise in excellent condition." In other words, clean, like-new, not used, probably never opened, but not having that glass-like gloss that mint copies have. Hurts are returns and, as such, have been handled just enough to take off that gloss. If you are new to bargain buying, you might want to shy away from anything with an "as is" designation. At the other extreme, if you insist on mint only, you will have very slim pickings.
Free Freight
Not in this dictionary. Free freight is something publishers are occasionally able to offer, never remainder wholesalers. Freight is too high a percentage of the cost, both for the wholesaler bringing in the books and the bookstores buying them. The book that was published at $19.95 which the bookstore now sells at $7.95 still weighs the same. On the other hand, all remainder wholesalers get great freight rates and provide it at cost, so it's as low as it can go.
Not in this dictionary. Free freight is something publishers are occasionally able to offer, never remainder wholesalers. Freight is too high a percentage of the cost, both for the wholesaler bringing in the books and the bookstores buying them. The book that was published at $19.95 which the bookstore now sells at $7.95 still weighs the same. On the other hand, all remainder wholesalers get great freight rates and provide it at cost, so it's as low as it can go.
Hurts
Hurts are returns. When booksellers return a book to the publisher
or distributor for credit, it goes into a bin and eventually, after the bins
become truckloads, gets sold off to one of the remainder wholesalers, often on
a contract basis. Again, remainder is a generic term often used when hurts are
what is meant, and this leads to some confusion. There are lots of remainder
wholesalers in the business who trade exclusively in hurts, but call themselves
remainder wholesalers, as do their customers. Hurts are not really hurt, though
they can be. They have a mark on them, usually on the bottom edge, because they
are current books that could be mistaken for new and returned again for credit.
The mark is to prevent this. Most of my business, by far, is in hurts. The
books are more current and often more sought after, and come in much shorter
quantities and much greater variety. It is easier to build a bargain department
around hurts than remainders due to the broad selection.
Hurts Sorters: See Remainder Wholesalers, below
Overstocks & White Sales
Overstocks are usually not returns, though they can be. They are
frequently unmarked and come in their original publisher cartons, at least as
shipped to the remainder wholesalers' warehouses. Overstocks tend to be more
expensive, your cost being 15% - 25%* of list price, as opposed to the typical
10% - 15%* for hurts and remainders. Overstocks, like hurts, are still current
books. They tend to show up in higher quantities than hurts, but lower than remainders.
The publisher (or their bean counters) have decided to make a little room in
their warehouse, while keeping the book in print. Sometimes the publishers sell these directly to booksellers in "White Sales."
Packages
Packages are like bargain reprints, in that they are produced to
the same quality standards as full priced books, but priced to sell in the
bargain market. Packages are often new titles, not reprints of classics or
copyright-free books. Packages include full color cookbooks, gardening, art,
and children's books, and can have sales that rival trade best sellers. There
are publishers that specialize in packages. Some remainder wholesalers have
their own publishing divisions, producing packages based on the successes they
have had with their remainders.
Put
A remainder wholesaler may decide that a book which has not yet
been remaindered is an ideal book for them. They will tell the publisher how
many they would take, or agree to take all remaining, and at what cost. It is not a bid on a remainder list, it
is a forecast of a hoped for deal. This is a put. Puts can help publishers with
print run decisions and can help remainder wholesalers with some projection in
a hard to project business.
Remainder
This is what most of us in the trade call any book that is sold
wholesale to the trade to be sold in turn at a deep discount to the end
customer. Real remainders, however, are only those books which the publisher
has decided are no longer carrying their weight in the distribution chain. It
might be some first-and-last novel that sold several hundred less than its
initial 2000 copy print run, or a novel by Stephen King that has sold in the
hundreds of thousands or more through a dozen printings. If there are too many
new books in line to be produced, the publisher needs warehouse space fast, so
they cut their losses and take the book off their front, back, and any list and
sell the entire remaining inventory to the highest bidder. (More on that
highest bidder later.) The book no longer generates royalties for the author,
it cannot be returned to the publisher by anybody anywhere for any reason for
any credit, it is out of print. Real remainders used to be marked, now they are
not, and are often in mint condition. Since everything runs on scanners, such
as when you return a book for credit that was a remainder when you bought it,
marks are only for hurts. I created an entry for remainder marks here because
the term has become a misnomer.
Remainder Marks
Marks are no longer placed on remainders. Before the age of UPC
codes and warehouse scanners, remainder marks were used to indicate that a book
was remaindered and could not be returned. Now the books returned to publishers
for credit are scanned as they are received and your account is not credited
for those which you return after the remainder date. Hurts (see entry here),
not remainders, are marked. The mark is usually a black dash or line on
the bottom edge of the book which can only be seen if you pick up the book and
look. Some publishers use other marks, but the majority use a black marker.
Remainder Wholesalers
The businesses that buy remainders, overstocks, and hurts from the
publishers and sell them to other businesses that sell them to the end consumer
are called remainder wholesalers. Most of the businesses referred to as
remainder wholesalers are not exclusively selling remainders, and several never
sell any remainders. Many only sell hurts and some of us old timers in the
industry call these Hurts
Sorters. Some remainder wholesalers did so well with some of their
remainders that they bought the rights from the publishers and started printing
their own. Some went on to become publishers as a result of this continuing
activity. See Packages above, for more on this.
Skids and Pallets
Hurts are sometimes sold by skid or pallet, two words meaning the
same thing in this context. These are usually a 42 inch or 48 inch cardboard
cube filled to capacity with books, the whole thing wrapped and attached to or
resting on a wooden or plastic pallet. They are sold per book, skid, or pound.
Though I have not seen the latter for several years, I'm sure the
books-by-the-pound deals are still out there. Buying skids is one way to build
up your bargain section in a hurry, however you will get lots of books that
don't sell along with the huge winners and middle of the road stuff. The way to
shop for these is to ask if a maximum quantity per title per skid can be, if
not guaranteed, guessed at. You don't want a 1200 book skid to come in with 500
copies of one title. Trust me, it won't be the title you were hoping for. You
also need the cost per book to be some fraction of the average bargain cost for
the same product. If you usually pay an average of $2.15 per book for the line,
don't pay $2.00* per book in a skid lot. Expect to pay between $.0.90 and
$1.30*, depending on the overall desirability and format. In addition to
getting an idea of how many books per title per skid there are, you should also
get your supplier to vouch for condition. If the skids are loaded with a pitch
fork it does not matter how low the cost, you don't want them. Books should at
least be stacked neatly and packed tightly enough not to flow or bump during
shipment. Another qualifier is raw or untouched versus worked. If a wholesaler
has their own retail internet business, they will sometimes put their rejects
from that side of the business in skids which should really be called
assortments, but they call them worked or touched skids. They tend to sell for
less money than raw skids. Raw or untouched skids are as received from
the publishers. You should also ask if there is a manifest of the contents.
This is usually not available, but if it is, you can use it to determine which
are the best skids for you. If you are a small or relatively new bookseller, I
would advise against buying skids. If you do decide to buy them, work only with
companies and sales people you know well and trust.
*A Note About Pricing. I am putting this here because this page is, by far, the most popular place to visit on my blog. Given that this is my most popular page (twice as popular as my next most popular post, http://benarcherbooks.blogspot.com/2014/07/sections-departments-palaces.html), it is possible that many who are reading this page are either new to the business of bookselling, or booksellers new to the business of bargain books, all of which is great news. If, however, you are not in the business of bookselling, if you are a retail customer looking for books, please let me know and I will direct you to a great bookseller near you.
So, as I was about to say: Pricing cited above is
referring to your cost as a bookseller, charged to you by the wholesalers who
have arrangements with publishers which make it possible to bring you these
books. The prices I mention here are not firm or even representative of prices
charged by wholesalers everywhere. Your cost will depend on who you are buying
from, how fresh the inventory is, condition, terms, and if the wholesaler is
under pressure to sell.