Books Really Are For Burning

Nick Gillespie | September 6, 2007

Reader John Struan sends along this mind-boggling story, slugged Kansas City, Mo.:

Store Owners Burn Books In Protest: Book Store Owners Protest 'Decline In Reading'

Comments

|9.6.07 @ 9:58AM|#

I guess it depends on what they burned. Frankly, if they burned a bunch of Steven King and John Grisham trade paperbacks, I don't really see the problem. Not every book deserves a home or to live forever.

shecky|9.6.07 @ 9:58AM|#

That'll show 'em.

Episiarch|9.6.07 @ 10:04AM|#

Well, if they actually couldn't even give them away, I don't see what else they could do. They'd most likely get charged for disposal if they just sent them to the dump.

Then again, they weren't willing to sell them to operations that compete against used book stores, so they sort of exacerbated their own problem.

lunchstealer|9.6.07 @ 10:11AM|#

"We're a small used bookstore," noted Wayne, "most of the ideas we've received would cost us thousands of dollars and dozens of hours, or would have us provide our inventory to organizations that compete directly with used bookstores."

Translation: We want somebody to take a bunch of inventory that we don't think is commercially viable such that we don't have to pay disposal costs, but we don't want to give them to a library because we want people to buy books. Just not these books.

Which is a valid sentiment, I suppose, but I lean more to the 'lame' side of the equation for the most part. I don't know what sorts of books they were, but a friend-of-a-friend whose husband is Cameroonian was taking as many donations as they could to found a library in his home village. As long as it wasn't a collection of deconstructionist criticism of Madame Bovary as post WWII allegory, then something like that would probably be great.

|9.6.07 @ 10:20AM|#

Nooo!! If only we'd done something! Now look, those books are all gone now. *sniff*. Oh, if only I could turn back the hands of time... Such a tragic, tragic loss.

Guy Montag|9.6.07 @ 10:32AM|#

The real question is did they follow the proper procedure?

|9.6.07 @ 10:40AM|#

I guess it depends on what they burned.

Amen to that! Remember 90% of everything is crap.

|9.6.07 @ 10:44AM|#

I actually shop at that store and have chatted with Wayne any number of times. Indeed, the books were crap, and it was a publicity stunt. Still, it's a pretty good store.

Rhywun|9.6.07 @ 11:04AM|#

What's the matter with Kansas City?

|9.6.07 @ 11:06AM|#

Burn some books, get free publicity.

Destroying unsellable books is nothing new: most of the time the paper get recycled.

Decline in reading ? My guess is that there is an inflation of books: for 1500 USD everybody can publish her or his book in at least 500 copies.

Books are not for burning, but the current bibliolatria deserves a few setbacks: most of the books are not worth the paper they are printed on and the space they would occupy if given a "home", and it would be much better to have them distributed in a digital format.

There is something rotten in the bookshop, though ... On one hand, books seem to become more expensive to print since better paper and more color is used even for brochures relevant for a very limited time span; on the other hand, printing craftsmanship seems to be lacking, since most of the books are printed with very long lines, very little space between lines, sans serif fonts in the text body etc. The art of binding books seems to be almost lost: most books "explode" after a few years when the glue used to keep the pages together gives up it's ghost. I do not keep with me most of the books I buy: scan them then store them in my parents attic as wall insulation.

|9.6.07 @ 11:12AM|#

Rywun-Well, it's really hot and humid in the summer, and, in the period between winters, people here invariably forget how to drive in snow and ice. Other than that, it's not a bad place to live.
Of course, the scary parts of Kansas are awfully close...

Thomas Paine\'s Goiter|9.6.07 @ 11:15AM|#

How can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep when our books are burning

|9.6.07 @ 12:16PM|#

I'm going to set my penis on fire to protest the decline of women wanting to touch my penis. That'll show 'em.

|9.6.07 @ 12:16PM|#

They're burning books they can't afford to keep. It's kind of lame that they'd rather burn them then let "organizations that compete" have them. However, the phrase "book burning" to my mind means burning books to keep them from being read because you don't like them. That sort of thing offends me greatly. This? meh

Rhywun|9.6.07 @ 12:41PM|#

Indeed, the books were crap, and it was a publicity stunt.

Lame. If he actually gave a shit, he could have had Salvation Army or Goodwill pick them up in no time. They'll take anything.

sv|9.6.07 @ 12:49PM|#

goodwill might have taken them, but libraries won't in general take any books you give them, since it costs them money, time, space etc. to store and catalogue them.

sv|9.6.07 @ 12:50PM|#

i.e., they won't take JUST any books you give them, they have to be in-demand books in good condition.

|9.6.07 @ 1:44PM|#

Well, I don't know if people are reading more or less... But book sales are at an all time high. People are buying more books than ever, probably because books are cheaper than ever relative to income.

I think that small book stores are having a hard time competing with the big mega-stores, specialty stores, and Amazon. But people are still reading and buying books.

|9.6.07 @ 1:59PM|#

In the early '90s I did some part time work at a used bookstore, and one of my tasks was to take the hundreds of books that had proven impossible to sell, put them in the owner's van, drive to a recycling collection point, and then throw the books in the back of a trailer.

This never got any national media attention, so I guess the KC people got my old employer beat.

jaime|9.7.07 @ 9:42AM|#

I figured it must have been some sort of stunt, because the people behind PaperbackSwap.com offered to take the books, and even to drive from Atlanta to KC to pick them up and they refused their offer.

From their August newsletter:
"It seems that the book-burning bookstore owners in MO aren't interested in working with PBS to rescue their surplus books. We haven't heard back from them, and now the "free time" in our schedules is disappearing as the summer ends. So we have taken down the Stop the Fires petition. Thanks everyone, for signing and pledging. We know they had a lot of worthy groups interested...we hope they decided to work with one of those, and have been able to get the books to readers instead of burning them. However, they haven't told us if and what they decided. If you see a roiling grey cloud over Kansas City, drive toward it with buckets! They may be burning books again. Sigh. We tried. Thanks again to all of our generous members who were so eager to help out; we were really blown away by the response."