No, hardcovers and trade paperbacks are sent back as is, since they may still be sold to another store. The marker stripe you've sometimes seen is done by the publishers only after the book has been remaindered.

Anybody else wondering if Kerfuffle Bunny is going to be talking about OSC?

I say, send the covers/dust jackets to Card, and include a note saying you made confetti for a gay wedding out of the rest.

the books are pulped (for recycling)

Not always. When I worked at Waldenbooks, we'd just box them up and toss them in the dumpster.

Ideally, of course, strips are sent home to new forever-homes with loving booksellers. Publishers like to crack down and say you can't do that, and then stores say "no, booksellers, you can't have that book we're throwing away!"

And then things start to slide again.

Anybody else wondering if Kerfuffle Bunny is going to be talking about OSC?

Probably Friday.

Is that where the 70% off books come from?

I may wind up selling my OSC's on eBay, but I don't think I could bring myself to physically damage one (to send him the covers). I once accidentally water-damaged my LotR set by putting a leaky humidifier on top of the bookshelf and I felt like I'd run over a puppy for about a week afterwards. It's not the books' fault their author is a raging psychotic bigot, you know?

t /anthropomorphism issues

I may wind up selling my OSC's on eBay, but I don't think I could bring myself to physically damage one (to send him the covers). I once accidentally water-damaged my LotR set by putting a leaky humidifier on top of the bookshelf and I felt like I'd run over a puppy for about a week afterwards. It's not the books' fault their author is a raging psychotic bigot, you know?

I'm actually with you on this. I find it difficult to write in the margins of textbooks, let alone damage any other kind of book.

I'll probably just send them back whole.

I find it difficult to write in the margins of textbooks, let alone damage any other kind of book.

I happily wrote in the margins of my math/science textbooks. Never EVER in anything for an English/Lit class. Even when it was the teacher's STRONGLY recommended (read: mandatory but unenforceable because at the end of the day they were our books) method of note-taking. I just couldn't do it. Not even with books I hated.

Oddly, I love finding other people's notes in the margins of used books.

Oh, and I finally started writing in cookbooks after I realized that it really wasn't fair to get mad at DH for making a recipe "wrong" by following what was in the book, just because the way I use recipes is as a memory jog for the bits I've changed.

I have no problem writing/underlining/etc. in mass-market paperbacks.

I sometimes write in trade paperbacks (of novels, NOT comics).

I would sooner cut off my hand than write in a hardcover book that isn't a textbook.

Bizarre hierarchy, huh?