The big six traditional publishers all offer and support book return policies. For them, it’s essential. Otherwise, retailers might order books in small quantities in order to avoid being stuck with excess inventory. This means more expense for the publishers in shipping and handling costs, not to mention labor. In addition, if books aren’t on the shelves, they can’t be sold, leading buyers to seek another channel (like Amazon.com). It’s in the retailers’ best interest to have the books on hand, and in the publisher’s best interest to make this possible.
For the author who publishes himself/herself, the return issue is a bit more challenging. First of all, the books are likely to be printed on demand and shipped direct. Unless the author’s service provider has a way to re-inventory the returned book, the book, in simple terms, has nowhere to go. Returns could end up just clogging the author’s basement. Secondly, if a book that has been paid for is returned, the author must devise a system for refunding the purchaser’s money. Since the sale was most likely handled electronically, this can be a matter of establishing an arrangement with a merchant-services provider.
For the do-it-yourselfers, a return policy makes much less sense than for retailers and publishers. On the other hand, having a “no returns under any circumstances” policy could conceivably make people less likely to order. A workable return policy, openly stated so that the buyer understands it, is the best way to go. But, this can vary so much depending on the subject, target market, packaging and price of the book that it’s hard to come up with a hard and fast rule. The main thing the author has to do is make a rational assessment of the risk involved in not offering returns and proceed accordingly.
An interesting note is that there is much discussion online these days about the efficacy of book return policies and whether they’ll last. Some feel they are a hold over from the early days of publishing and that all the changes in the industry make it obvious that this policy is outdated and should be eliminated. Their position is that traditional return policy of publishers means the publisher takes all the risk and the bookstores get to avoid the risk that every other retailer assumes when ordering product. This is the risk inherent in knowing how much of a product to order for your store so you sell it all and are not stuck with inventory on your shelves that you paid for but can’t move. It remains to be seen if the larger traditional publishing houses will change this policy or not. In smaller publishing houses, with self publishers, and in many academic publishing houses, the ‘return-ability’ of a book is not a guarantee like it is with the big publishers. This is one more element of publishing to watch over time.