Simon and Schuster are the ones to blame!

*****Reposted with today's date specifically for Kristy Tallman =)

Well after continued research I now have the smoking gun and it lies squarely in Simon & Schuster's lap. Whose responsible for the outlandish return policy that sinks all small publishers eventually--Simon and Schuster. Here you go:

. . . The Great Depression of the 1930s hit the book publishing industry as hard as it hit every other sector of the American economy. Booksellers at that time were mostly small local businesses, and to help them survive the economic hardships of the depression, Simon and Schuster invented a system allowing booksellers to return unsold copies of books for credit against future purchases. Other publishers quickly had to follow Simon and Schuster's lead, and the practice became the industry standard. At times booksellers have been able to use this system to their advantage to clear inventories or to "pay" for copies of new books by returning unsold copies. Publishers have adapted to the system of returns by adding costs of shipping, warehousing, and recycling returned copies into the price of books. . .

Always nice to have facts. ;) 

So a system designed to help small booksellers survive the depression has become the Industry Standard and we have Simon & Schuster to thank for it.  

It says that publishers have adapted to the system of returns by adding costs of shipping, warehousing, and recycling returned copies into the price of the book. This means larger publishers. Smaller publishers haven't adapted to anything. They were never a part of the scenario. There is no costs for recycling books for them. Returned-from-the bookstore-books are never recycled and I doubt they ever were. My understanding is that today returned-from-the-bookstore books are sold to wholesalers who dabble in selling such books. For instance  Books-A-Million's two main wholesalers only sell returned-from-the-bookstore books. Going into a Books-A-Million you'd never know the books weren't actually new. For us small-pubbed authors those are stolen books. In other words we never see any money from them and our publishers never see any money from them. Our distributors tell us these books are destroyed.

Anyway I just wanted to add that little tidbit for all you new authors who wonder why things happen the way they do.

I particularly liked this clip as well which sort of sets the tone for how larger booksellers operate today.

In the 1970s, national chain bookstores such as Barnes and Noble and Waldenbooks began to open retail outlets in malls across the country. By buying in volume, chains could earn more profit on each copy of a book sold, allowing them to pay higher rents. Buying in volume also meant that they could negotiate deeper discounts from publishers. By passing this discount on to book buyers, the chains were able to attract customers away from the smaller independent bookstores. 

Well would you look at the bolded text! And one wonders why I detest Barnes & Noble and ALL the larger chains. I'll never make my books returnable again. Everyone makes money in this business but the producer of the product. Lovely.