We sell Remainder Books

Quixotic Books sells remainder books, our way of sourcing books that otherwise may not make it to Australian bookstores. But what is a remainder book?

When a new title is published the publisher can only guess how many copies are going to sell in a given country and more often than not they print too many. The title may be incredibly popular and sell-out at a bookstore and so they order more, but eventually a title’s opportunity to sell in any given store will be exhausted (e.g. Barrack Obama: A Promised Land) and copies begin to take up valuable real-estate on the shelves. Bookstores are able to pack up any remaining copies and send them back to the publisher for a refund.

Remainder Books can be identified with a dot or line on the tail

This may happen for many bookstores and suddenly the publisher finds themselves with a lot of returned books. Generally, they have two options – either destroy the books to free up warehouse space or resell them at a discounted price. It’s fantastic when they choose the latter because it means we at Quixotic Books can not only afford to bring them from overseas to Australia but also pass on the savings to you!

Each book has been personally selected from catalogues of tens of thousands of titles from around the world to come to Tasmania.

It’s a big wide world of literature out there, but we see so little despite the online world as most outlets are champing at the latest thing. Remaindered books are a fantastic way to expand your reading oeuvre as they're often niche titles which have slipped passed the eyes of stores all stocking the same bestseller.

There’s a catch though; publishers mark these books with a black or red pen along the base of the book to indicate the book’s status as being ‘remaindered’. If you can suffer this sacrilege, then you’ll find yourself in good company.