S inside a triangle near barcode on some books-Why?

On some of my books, near the barcode exists an equilateral triangle with a capital S in the middle. What does this mean?

I tried this, my favorite source for symbols,
** http://www.symbols.com/ **but couldn’t pin it down. The graphic index is a little complicated, though, so maybe you’d have better luck finding if it’s in there.

Yeah, symbols.com is cool, as is the book it’s derived from (see it here. Among other things, it has the best graphical representation of my tattoo I’ve ever seen (no, I’m not saying which one…)

About the whole “S in a triangle” thing, it’s an indication to retail booksellers that the book in question (usually mass market paperbacks) is a strippable return. In other words, they don’t have to return the whole book to the publisher to get credit for it, only the cover, which means that they will save a LOT on shipping costs and hassles. Smarter publishers will reprint the EAN barcode next to the strip mark, so that only half the cover need be returned. Not all publishers use strip marks, so not all strippable books are marked, but any book with that mark is strippable.

Note also that this is the origin of the boilerplate often seen on the copyright pages of paperback books about coverless books being stolen property. The bookseller’s credit agreement with the publisher obviously requires them to “immediately and totally destroy” everything but the cover if they’re returning it for credit, but not everyone does this, and in doing so, they are essentially stealing (most of) a book from the publisher, since they have recieved credit for returning it.

Some Guy, bookseller

I suppose those books with just the triangle would be returnable only if not stripped? What about those books with no triangles at all?

I’m quite interested in this, and I’m glad the SDMB has given me the chance to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. :slight_smile:

The “just plain” triangle is actually a variant of the triange-s strip mark. It means the same thing, but it’s a purely visual cue (the S is somewhat redundant, though inconsistency is always gonna ruin these sort of schemes further discussion below.)

If there’s no strip mark, that alone doesn’t necessarily mean anything- there’s no recognized symbol for “don’t strip me”. However, it does mean that you have to check on the book individually- or at least check the details of your agreement with the publisher, their policies with regard to the particular imprint and binding, discount-level exceptions, etc.- it’s much more of a pain than telling some $6-an-hour clerk to pull the covers off everything with that one mark, or telling a warehouse sorter to just check all the covers for the strip mark so they can be scanned properly for account credit. At my (large monolithic company) bookstore, we have access to a database of all titles that can display, among other things, the strip/no strip status for a particular book. Many, many, small independent bookstores simply don’t have this resource, so the strip mark is their cue that they can take advantage of cover returns.

Now, as far as I know, no publisher that offers strip credit requires stripping the book; it’s simply a convenience to the retail-level customers that account for 95% of any large publisher’s business. If there’s any doubt at all about whether a book is strippable, you obviously shouldn’t strip it- the publisher won’t credit you for a damaged book, and neither can you sell it. Returning whole books may cost more for shipping (remember, that’s the whole point of cover returns, to save the cost of shipping), but it also is the best way to guarantee that you’ll actually comply with the publisher’s return policy for crediting the book. That’s what gets done with the vast majority of books anyways- the publisher wants to receive books in return for issuing credit, so that they can sell acceptable copies again. Strippable books, on the other hand tend to be those with a high print run, a high shipping cost relative to their retail price, and little to no potential to sell as remainders (due to the fact that low pricing from the start precludes later deep discounting.

In other words, mass market paperbacks and popular/genre fiction.

HTH.