Books - front message and back coupons

[klingon 10]

In the front of books, theres always that "if there's no cover, this is stolen" warning. Whats the deal with that?

 

And does anyone in the world ever use one of those coupons at the back of paperbacks to buy novels "by the same author". They look like they're from decades back and I think they're just silly.

 

[me jane 0]

I always thought it meant that books that are unsold by the publisher had their covers ripped off before they were thrown out so they couldn't be retrived from the rubbish and sold. I might have just made that up though - I've got no idea where I got it from!

[merryJim 1]

Youd think theyd recycle

[damian 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by me jane:
I always thought it meant that books that are unsold by the publisher had their covers ripped off before they were thrown out so they couldn't be retrived from the rubbish and sold. I might have just made that up though - I've got no idea where I got it from!

Not so far from a certain fact, Me Jane. In the olden days (c 1990) before internet porn when one Me Spud was at university.... Well, it went like this: on some bored Tuesday nights we would by a box of cheap wine and wander the streets after fun. One of our check points included the big recycling skip bin behind the local news agency/paper shop (it only took paper so was clean). Every month they would ditch all the unsold magazines after ripping off the top half of the cover which was returned to the distributor for a refund. The bin was a random experience of delight. We would jump in with a torch and our wine and paper would be flying like a hurricane. After 30 minutes we usually had a huge pile of discarded porn mags which we would proudly distribute amongst the letter boxes of all our loacal house dwelling mates. They always enjoyed checking the mail.

We lived in a badly behaved residential college and word of our gold mine soon got out. One night we opened the bin and found Dunstan. Dunstan was a Malay Indian Muslim lad who was in the country to study engineering. Lets just say the lid was closed and when we opened the bin there he was, hard at work with torch in one hand and... something of similar shape in the other. We were all utter pricks back then, long haired louts with zero compassion, so after slamming the lid down and recovering from laughing side cramps we pushed the conveniently wheeled skip bin around the car park with one most likely scared shitless masturbating muslim inside. In the end we opened the lid up told him not to worry about it and ran off laughing. We gave him a bloody hard time at breakfast the next day but the college student committee caught wind of it and asked us not to tease him too much, even though they were red with laughter.

So yes, covers are often torn off printed material with the volume itself chucked in the recycling bin.

[klingon 10]

Interesting that, cheers.

 

Anyone ordered books from those crappy forms at the back?!

[HighlyTrainedNovaTeacher 2]

Those things are probably just left over from previous initial printings of the books I would think.