A Heck of a Deal
In Which We Talk About Our Books Hitting the Remainder Market ✌️
Let’s say we had a massive Ventorship Blowout Sale and everything in the gift shop/bookstore was marked 98% off. You get a whole brand new book for less than 50 cents! That’s a screaming deal, right? We’d flock to the sale, yeah? But, would you hesitate if that was the discount applied to your own books? That’s the situation one of our fellow author-passengers finds themself in, and they’re looking for advice. They write:
My agent just emailed me that my publisher has 419 hardcovers of my book left (out of the initial print run of 10k books!) and are putting them on the “Remainder Market”. She explained a little of what that means and they’re selling them for 39 cents! I want to buy them all, but also don’t want to miss out on 419 people getting my book in the bargain bin someplace because NEW READERS!
Do you know anything about this? What do authors do? Buy them all and resell/donate/give them away?
I don’t want to go too hard with selling them if that’s a thing because paperbacks are still selling and in print and I don’t want to throw a wrench in none of that action.
Or let them flourish at Half Price Books?
I’m torn because it’s the last of the hardcovers. My little babies. I want them all. Or at least 100. I don’t know. Do you? What would you do?
Please help.
Signed, Bargain Bin Baddie
Bargain Bin Baddie, I don’t know much about the Remainder Market (sometimes referred to as our books getting “remaindered”), personally. I do believe this means officially that they no longer plan on publishing your book in the hardcover format. But, I wouldn’t worry about that or about the remaining hardcovers going to a discount bookstore because, as you said, paperbacks are still selling well (plus there’s e-book and audiobook!), so those potential 419 readers (and so many more!) still have a plethora of avenues to find their way to your novel, and at a cheaper price point. Huzzah!
Also, I wouldn’t go about reselling them yourself, because that just opens a whole other can of worms in regards to taking money, taxes, the costs of lugging those books around with you or shipping them, blah blah blah.
So what exactly would I do with all those leftover hardcovers?
SNATCH THEM ALL UP!
I mean, at least as many as you can reasonably hold in your house/garage/storage unit/wherever you like to keep the shrine to yourself. Because that’s what I think this gives you a prime opportunity to do: celebrate yourself! For less than two hundred bucks you can have AN ENTIRE WALL OF YOUR BOOK! Personally, I’m a big fan of acknowledging and celebrating accomplishments, and what better way than to have hundreds of copies as the ultimate decoration piece? The bookshelf symmetry you could have! The whimsical shapes and formations in which you could stack all those! Or you know how Barbra Streisand has basically a shopping mall in her basement of archival looks from her career, or Kim Kardashian has storage units of the same? This is the author version of that! Create a You Museum that incorporates your art!
If that’s not your style, think of the good you could do with this arsenal of novels. You’ll have many a-copy on hand to give away to people you want to give them away to. I’m not talking friends or family who’ve been with you for a lifetime because I’m like, “Support me, dammit! Go buy it!” But perhaps there is a teacher/librarian/youth services group, etc. etc. etc. you come across that you think your book could do some fabulous good for, and since we all know their budgets are limited, having a stockpile on hand that you can give to them for free (maybe even a whole classroom set!) is a really magical experience.
Or maybe you just meet a single solitary reader who you know your book would be right for, but they might not have the means to get a copy for themself. What a gift to be able to lovingly fling a copy at them!
So snag those copies up! If you want ‘em all, take ‘em all, Baddie, and bask in the beauty of your book!
-JJ
What about you, author-passengers? What would you do with the opportunity to buy your remaindered books? Or, do any of you have any more info on what exactly goes into having your book remaindered (decision factors that go into this, when/if you should worry, etc.)? Feel free to include your thoughts in the comments below, or if you wish to remain anonymous, email me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com with the subject: VENTORSHIP, and I’ll remainder your name so it doesn’t appear when I post your thoughts.
If you’d like to vent about anything author/writing related, write to me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com with the subject: VENTORSHIP. I’ll give you my take in a post, and we’ll crowdsource author opinions in the comments. You’ll remain anonymous, and any haters will be thrown overboard. Ultimately, I think you’re going to be buoyed up by author love and support as we realize we really are all in the same boat 🛳️
So, I don't know a ton about this because despite a few of my books having been remaindered, I've only been told about it and been given the opportunity to buy my hardcovers once. (I only knew about the others because I am an avid browser on Book Outlet, but apparently I didn't have to be told those books were going out of print because they naturally ran out their print run, or something?) For what it's worth, I bought 75, though they weren't offered to me for quite as cheap as the poster's here are, or I probably would've bought 100. In retrospect, I feel like it wasn't enough and I should've bought all of them. I also haven't done anything with these copies and feel silly that I have 75. So like most things in publishing, there probably is no right answer.
The one thing I feel pretty confident is that there's no reason to panic about a hardcover being remaindered after your paperback release; that's very normal, and also, remainders can happen any time something's been over-ordered. The Spellshop is in Book Outlet right now in hardcover and the paperback just hit USA Today in its first week of release. Hell, Emily Henry has two books there. I mean, Fourth freaking Wing is over there, remaindered and still selling like gangbusters. So do not fret, but don't let this opportunity to buy a bunch of your stuff pass you by, either, because you don't wanna be hunting down copies of your own work on eBay in five years, and you can always do giveaways or put your books in little free libraries if you decide you wish you'd found more readers - you weren't gonna make money off these remaindered books anyway!
I've had A LOT of my books get remaindered in different formats and my publishers have been pretty good about informing me when that happens and letting me buy them (with one exception that I'll happily share IRL in hushed tones in a bar one day). I used to buy tons of copies but then...I stopped. I keep a few extras around, but my attic started filling up and I never knew what to do with the copies anyway. And I started to feel like holding on to those copies was sort of me clinging to the past, when I want to move forward, creatively and professionally. So I don't order many copies anymore. I keep about ten or fewer around for each book and, maybe I'll regret it one day, or not have extras to give away, but I just decided I don't want my shelves to be a shrine to my past. I'm trying to be less sentimental about stuff in general, and book stuff specifically, so maybe that's part of it. Like my mother in law says, "I've never seen a hearse pulling a U-Haul." I'm learning to celebrate the publishing wins, mourn the losses and just keep moving forward. The remainder bin is for readers to discover my past work, not for me. I'm already writing my future.