Don't judge a book by it's cover. Or sell it without one.

Last weekend I bought a bunch of books. One of them said it was a 30th Anniversary edition, so I decided to check the copyright page to see when it originally came out. At the bottom of that page, there was the following text:

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

I thought that was a bit odd, that it would be assumed that a missing cover was a sure sign that it was stolen. After all, it's not like if someone broke into my apartment and stole some books they'd be ripping the cover off them, right? And how would they know the publisher wasn't paid?

A later Google search informed me that "A 'stripped book' is a mass market paperback that has been stripped of its cover in order to be pulped and recycled as a result of lack of sales. The covers are returned to the publisher as evidence that the books have been destroyed and the books are discarded or recycled into paper or cardboard products."¹ Ah, that makes more sense.

I checked other books I have, and some actually go as far as to say that it is illegal to sell the book without a cover. Others say you're not allowed to sell or even lend the book to anyone with anything other than the cover it was published in. But that still left me with the question, who would actually want to buy a book without its cover? I know I wouldn't.

¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripped_book