Value-Added Strategy Reduces Waste

Entrepreneurial companies in the publishing industry are finding business opportunities to reduce waste created during distribution.  Known as “pre-consumer waste,” waste materials are often produced after the product is manufactured but before the customer purchases the product.  One example of this is called Book Pulping.

Due to limited shelf space and aggressive inventory turnover ratios, hardcover and paperback books that sell slowly are deeply discounted.  If that doesn’t eliminate the inventory, they are quickly sent back to the publisher or on to a wholesaler or re-lister.  Some books may even be in the warehouse, never reaching the retailer’s shelves when returned. And most, known as “remainders,” are pulped.

Pulping involves removing the cover of a book and recycling the paper ‘book block’ by mixing it with water and chemicals to break down the paper and ink so that it can then be down-cycled to use for other paper products.

Pulping is expected in the publishing industry – especially for more prominent publishers with a greater chance of unsold books being remaindered.  Printed books often outpace demand for several reasons:

• Overly optimistic forecasts.
• Sudden market changes that lead to a downturn in sales.
• Printing more than forecast to achieve economies of scale printing discounts.
• To grab attention from competitor titles with showy retailer displays.

The major publishing houses all focus on using sustainably-harvested, FSC-certified paper, effective paper recycling, low-impact dyes, and increased Print-on-Demand options.

But the volume of books published each year is so great that many online wholesalers and remainder distributors have moved in to fill the space in the market with discounted prices.

But MyFairBooks.com, a French start-up company, is an example of a company that addresses the problem by adding value instead.  Prompted by estimates that 140 million books are destroyed by pulping in France each year, the company set a product exclusivity strategy.

To do this, the company works with independent publishers who pre-select titles from unsold stocks. Then, MyFairBooks has a reading committee that reviews each book and then re-positions it in a new light using current themes.  The result is a curated customer experience that offers readers the promise that they are reading quality books missed by others.  The company keeps the book from being pulped by increasing its allure.