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A remaindered book is one whose publisher has allowed it to go out of print, and is liquidating their remaining unsold copies by selling them at greatly reduced prices. Publishers often remainder their hardback books when they publish paperback editions of the same titles. In other cases, books may be remaindered because they are not selling quickly enough to pay for the inventory costs of keeping them in stock and selling only a few copies per year, or because the publisher is going out of business.
A remaindered book can often by identified in one of two ways:
- marks, typically a bold black or red line drawn across the top or bottom of the book's pages, visible when looking at the book from the top or bottom
- price cut-out, done by slicing a triangular portion of the dust jacket flap, removing the original list price as placed there by the publisher
Only hardcovers and trade paperbacks (paperback books, often larger than "pocket" paperbacks, sold "to the trade" or directly to sales outlets) are typically remaindered. Mass market paperbacks ("pocket" paperback books sold through a third-party distributor) are often pulped; they are stripped of their front covers (which are returned to the publisher as evidence that the books have been destroyed), and the books are discarded or recycled into paper or cardboard products.
Since the Thor Power Tool Company v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue decision of 1979 in the United States and its adverse effects on the keeping of inventories for several years, books in that country have been remaindered much earlier than before and in greater numbers than before, changing completely the nature of the book trade. Since that 1979 decision, the number of unsold books which have simply been destroyed (by being burned or recycled into paper or cardboard) instead of being sold at a large reduction has also risen greatly.
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