Comments on The Swivet [Colleen Lindsay]: Loved to death: On book-stripping and why some boo...

Yeah, book stripping is one of my favourite tasks ...

2009-02-05T16:55:00.000-05:00

Yeah, book stripping is one of my favourite tasks at work.
Especially when I get to tear apart all the really frustrating books that fall off the shelves constantly because they're so overstocked.

Plus it's a great way to work out any frustration, haha.

Wow, so many booksellers here! Personally, I love...

2008-10-29T19:02:56.381-04:00

Wow, so many booksellers here! Personally, I love stripping books. It's a cheap catharsis, and I rarely do it to books I love, though it's sometimes more painful to watch those yellow on the shelves. Most often I'm glad to see them go.

I'm guilty of bringing some home, too, however. I just read a strip of an Alastair Reynolds last month that I liked well enough. Pushing Ice I think it was.

In France stripping is forbidden. Booksellers ress...

2008-10-27T07:58:49.958-04:00

In France stripping is forbidden. Booksellers ressells their stocks to a usaged books sellers. Occasion books is a a very florishing market specially in the big towns.

I never ended up stripping anything in my bookstor...

2008-10-26T20:17:12.478-04:00

I never ended up stripping anything in my bookstore. For one thing, I was so underfunded, I needed to have something on the shelves to fill space.

When I turned over the bookstore for a nominal cost to my manager (had to do real work after a divorce), she probably stripped books. She was a far better businesswoman than me.

I'm happy that she continued the store for another fifteen years until ill-health made her give it up. It was an excellent run for a very small Indy.

The guy at work who's in charge of returns wanders...

2008-10-25T16:52:04.169-04:00

The guy at work who's in charge of returns wanders around and spreads the word that there's strips to be taken in the "usual place". By the end of the day, there's usually very little left; anything else gets put out with the recycling. When I first started there, the stripping used to upset me--now, I just accept it as a sad fact of the book business.

wow. I never even heard of stripping, nor did I kn...

2008-10-25T12:16:34.625-04:00

wow. I never even heard of stripping, nor did I know they do that.

BUT that answers my life-long question. When I was a child, I remember noticing a statement on so many books, that would appear on the back of the front cover, that says something along the line of "if this book has been sold without a cover, please be aware that it has been sold without proper royalties" blah blah you get what i mean.

anyway, interesting article.

When I worked at my family's bookstore, stripping ...

2008-10-24T16:49:53.372-04:00

When I worked at my family's bookstore, stripping books was one of my least favorite jobs. Each ripping sound just sickened me and made me feel guilty that we hadn't done more for the author, pushed her book harder, sold it at the counter . . . anything. I even pitied the book itself: "Sorry we have to do this to you. You just weren't moving." But it's a part of the business. Out with the old, in with the new. My father was the greatest book lover I've ever known, but he and my mother also had a family to support.

But we never gave those books away. We threw them away, which was always a very sad sight as well. But if people could get these books for free in a bin at the front of the store, perhaps they wouldn't buy one of the bright, new ones sitting on the shelf, hoping to find an owner before getting stripped as well.

Two great articles. Thanks for linking to them.