The perils of sale or
return
This can be a real sticking point for small publisher and
book sellers. It can upset a very carefully designed financial plan that
otherwise means the publisher doesn’t
pay any upfront production costs until the book is sold. It can leave
the publisher out of pocket and can prevent the writer from receiving
royalties.
If publishers don’t offer sale or return, they are not
attractive to the book seller. The book shop only has so much shelf space. They
can’t keep books that are not selling there forever. They need to sell books.
What return actually
means
Usually if books are indeed returned they are not sell-able.
They may have had stickers put on. They
may have been man-handled. They will have traveled around quite a lot. It’s relatively common practice for the
bookseller to remove the covers and return just those to the publisher as proof
that the book has not been sold. If mass printed conventionally, that’s
probably 20p per copy, so perhaps bearable. However, if the publisher is using
print on demand as many small publishers now do, the unit cost is considerably
higher – pounds not pence. In both cases, it’s also common practice to set this
loss against royalties earned. The author is not charged for the loss but
shares the loss with the publisher.
