Stripped Books

Here’s a guestblog from reader <Rule 15 Suspended With Author’s Consent>Mary Catelli</Rule 15 Suspended With Author’s Consent>, who writes:

It occured to me that you or your readers might be interested in a little detail about books.

Sometimes you see stories with boxes and boxes of books, really cheap. The books don’t have covers.

The reason they are cheap is that they were obtained by fraud. The bookstore stripped off the covers and sent them back to the publisher as proof they didn’t sell. They are supposed to destroy the books, as this is cheaper than sending them back.

But they don’t always.

(For this reason, although writers seldom (if ever) object to used bookstores, it would be rash indeed to ask a writer to autograph a stripped book.)

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

8 thoughts on “Stripped Books”

  1. About books and MP3, does the same moral rules for downloading apply? Is print a downloaded book and read it the same as going to a library? or is it stealing?

  2. It’s piracy. Going to the library is different because the library actually paid for the book you check out, whereas when you download and print it out the author isn’t getting paid. This, of course, only applies to books which still have copyrights. Books which have gone into the public domain (e.g., Dickens, Shakespeare, much of Chesterton, etc.) are fair game.

  3. One interesting variant of the “strip-and-sell” practice was something I encountered at a college bookstore. They had a tub of stripped paperbacks that they were giving away. I took a few because I figured that no one was profiting illegitimately. These days I don’t know if I would do that because it occurs to me that the store still violated the principle of destroying — rather than making available to potential customers — books for which they had been refunded.

  4. This, of course, only applies to books which still have copyrights.
    It also doesn’t apply to e-books that you pay for and download, e.g., from Amazon.com.

  5. Or for books made available for free download by the authors. For example, the author of The Wellstone made an audio edition of his book available for download from his homepage, in honor of a blind friend. His publisher was okay with this. He did not give away his copyright by doing this; he has the right to withdraw this offer whenever he desires; and it is not illegal, immoral, or fattening to download, distribute, or burn these files for others. (Unless the guy does withdraw the audio edition, in which case you can keep what you’ve got but you shouldn’t distribute.)
    http://www.wilmccarthy.com/audio.htm
    Many authors provide extensive sample chapters on their websites as well, up to and including entire books. (Their reasoning is that any fan insane enough to read a book off a website is probably insane enough to buy the book when it comes out and push it on all their friends, too.) Out of print books and stories often get this treatment, too.
    Furthermore, Baen Books makes many free ebooks available on their site, since they have discovered that a free read is a free ride into readers’ wallets. Someone who’s read and liked one book in a series wants to read them all. Someone who’s read and loved one book by an author wants to read others. Behold the Baen Free Library. http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm
    Finally, a good number of writers give their writing away on their websites or blogs and find themselves getting noticed by friends of friends of actual publishers. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.
    A lot of folks here seem to forget that free and legal are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Sometimes, the best advertisement is giving stuff away; and sometimes people just like giving something back to their readers and fans.

  6. If one is aware of this defrauding of the authors/publishers, how does one report it? What agency is responsible for the enforcement of such laws?

  7. I asked about. . .
    It would be local police, but alas it is usually under their radar.
    The best route is to tell the publisher of the books.

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