-=> Quoting Phil Marlowe to Leonard Erickson <=-

 PM> That's interesting -- I hadn't heard of that
 PM> specific one before. Here's another example along
 PM> those lines.
 PM> 
 PM> When, a few years back, the visual and audio media
 PM> folks first started developing these various
 PM> schemes to extract as much moola from you and me
 PM> as the market could bear, the print media folks
 PM> [book publishers, that is] tried to get in on the
 PM> action too.
 PM> 
 PM> This was after the publishers had already jacked
 PM> their prices sky-high and they felt threatened by
 PM> all the second hand book stores that suddenly
 PM> popped up as a result of those prices --
 PM> bookstores from which they, the publishers,
 PM> derived no profits.

Well, while they went wway overboard, there actually *was* a reasom why
book prices jumped drastically a while back and things quit staying on
the shelves long.

Seems there was a tax case involving a machine tool manufacturer. They
would make up a large batch of the (very expensive) gizmos they made,
and sell them over an extended period. This had major tax advantages. 

I don't recall the details, but what the point apparently was was that
they were claiming the value of the warehoused gizmos at the
manufacturing cost (or maybe even less). The case came down to them
being required to pay taxes based on the value they'd *sell* for.

This meant that the book publishing industry could no longer publish
huge print runs and let the unsold books sit in warehouses until they
eventually sold. Because the taxes on the unsold inventory would ruin
them.

So they now have to print what they expect to sell in the near future.
And rather than unsold paperbacks and magazines being sent back to be
held onto until they can be sold, the retailers strip off the covers
and send them back and throw out the books/magazines. 

That doesn't mean they didn't do some gouging as well, but that
decision *really* fucked over the publishing industry. :-(


 PM> They supposedly abandoned doing all this, but now,
 PM> when I buy some paperback and the pages start
 PM> popping off the spine as I read, I wonder if they
 PM> really went ahead with that scheme.

Corner cutting. Also, I know of at least one publisher who got an
unpleasant surprise when they switched glue suppliers. They discovered
that the glue failed under all sorts of circumstances. Like during
shipping... Oops.


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