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<blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9275252" data-attributes="member: 7044704">SteveC answered that better than I could.&nbsp; My brief book trade period was roughly 2005-2007, so well past TSR's demise.&nbsp; You rarely saw anything but mass market paperbacks and magazines actually being cover-stripped for returns, although some trades are also returnable and suffer the same fate.&nbsp; If a hardcover is returnable at all, it goes back intact, and the publisher usually has to not only refund part of the wholesale cost they eat the return shipping as well.&nbsp; It's possible that 90s TSR had a deal that allowed hardcover returns, which would just have made things even worse for them. Yep, many store owners just don't understand their own business.&nbsp; Core RPG books are a tricky balancing act from even savvy game store owners.&nbsp; You want enough to satisfy demand between ordering cycles (which are usually periods of between 3 days to a week in the old days) but no more than that, and it's initially hard to predict that with a newer game whose community is growing faster than it will down the road.&nbsp; With supplements you can look at your total core book sales to have an idea how many local groups you may have and guesstimate your initial order from that info, but when it comes to reorders the correct number is usually one copy at a time at most - most supplements do not sell well past their initial release.&nbsp; Ideally, you also adjust your initial order based on whether the supplement is mostly player facing (there are inevitably more players than GMs even if each individual player is less likely to buy a given book) or not, and making an effort to know what games are actually active locally is important too.&nbsp; A game that sells a bunch of core books but doesn't establish a local player base isn't going to do great with its supplements in most cases.Unfortunately, a lot of store owners just don't think this way and wind up with silly amounts of backstock - or out of business altogether, in worst case scenarios.&nbsp; Makes for good going out of business sales, though.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Wofano Wotanto, post: 9275252, member: 7044704"] SteveC answered that better than I could. My brief book trade period was roughly 2005-2007, so well past TSR's demise. You rarely saw anything but mass market paperbacks and magazines actually being cover-stripped for returns, although some trades are also returnable and suffer the same fate. If a hardcover is returnable at all, it goes back intact, and the publisher usually has to not only refund part of the wholesale cost they eat the return shipping as well. It's possible that 90s TSR had a deal that allowed hardcover returns, which would just have made things even worse for them. Yep, many store owners just don't understand their own business. Core RPG books are a tricky balancing act from even savvy game store owners. You want enough to satisfy demand between ordering cycles (which are usually periods of between 3 days to a week in the old days) but no more than that, and it's initially hard to predict that with a newer game whose community is growing faster than it will down the road. With supplements you can look at your total core book sales to have an idea how many local groups you may have and guesstimate your initial order from that info, but when it comes to reorders the correct number is usually one copy at a time at most - most supplements do not sell well past their initial release. Ideally, you also adjust your initial order based on whether the supplement is mostly player facing (there are inevitably more players than GMs even if each individual player is less likely to buy a given book) or not, and making an effort to know what games are actually active locally is important too. A game that sells a bunch of core books but doesn't establish a local player base isn't going to do great with its supplements in most cases. Unfortunately, a lot of store owners just don't think this way and wind up with silly amounts of backstock - or out of business altogether, in worst case scenarios. Makes for good going out of business sales, though. [/QUOTE]

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