Books for a Penny Can't Be Good for Publishing

If you've ever wondered why publisher's are suffering, you only need to look so far as a web site like BookCloseouts.com -- which just this morning sent me an email touting their promotion of selling 50 titles for a penny each (plus shipping, of course, which is where they make their profit).

The one penny books are entirely undesirable either: Alec Klein's fine book, A Class Apart, about Stuyvesant High School is there, as is Robert Draper's book on George W. Bush, Dead Certain, is on sale as well. Take a look for yourself.

Our industry needs to examine how any book manages, yard sales excepted, to end up on sale for just a penny. UPS/FedEx and the shipping companies are raking it in. Frankly, all this shipping back-and-forth of books -- for what? A Penny -- surely isn't worth the cost to environment.