A remaindered book is one whose publisher has allowed it to go out of print, and is liquidating their remaining unsold copies by selling them at greatly reduced prices. Publishers often remainder their hardback books when they publish paperback editions of the same titles. In other cases, books may be remaindered because they are not selling quickly enough to pay for the inventory costs of keeping them in stock and selling only a few copies per year, or because the publisher is going out of business.
A remaindered book can often by identified in one of three ways:
- marks, typically a bold black or red line drawn across the top or bottom of the book's pages, visible when looking at the book from the top or bottom.
- price cut-out, done by slicing a triangular portion of the dust jacket flap, removing the original list price as placed there by the publisher.
- A rectangular cut-out through the entire book on the fore-edge, hopefully missing the text.
