Why We Don’t Return Books: A Sustainable Stand Against Waste

In French bookshops it’s common practice: return the books you’re not able to sell (of course there are some more conditions). But what actually happens to these books after sending them back? Will they all find their place in another shop or will they be destroyed?

📈 The Number of Books Returned Each Year

To understand the amount of books returned, you also need to understand how many new books are getting published each year.

🇫🇷 French Numbers

According to an article of Ouest France in 2024, there are around 68.000 new books (in all different genres) each year and SLF (Syndicat de la Librairie Française) let us know the amount is actually 75.000. Within these numbers, you'll also find the books for the French phenomenon called “Rentrée Littéraire” - a selection of books for the famous “Prix Goncourt”. This number has slightly decreased from 567 in 2018 to 459 in 2024.

If you have, let’s say an average of 70K new books each year, how many are getting returned each year? Online literary newspaper ActuaLitté published an article last year about these unsold books.

Descendu à 19,3 % sur la période 2021-2022, le volume des livres invendus en France en 2023 s'établit à 22 % du volume d'ouvrages transportés vers les points de vente, d'après des données relayées par l'ADEME, l'Agence de la transition écologique, dans un rapport. Cela représente 41.000 d'ouvrages qui retrouvent les entrepôts des distributeurs. Having fallen to 19.3% over the period 2021-2022, the volume of unsold books in France in 2023 stands at 22% of the volume of works transported to points of sale, according to data relayed by ADEME, the Agency for Ecological Transition. This represents 41,000 books returning to distributors' warehouses.

The latest survey of SLF dates from 2021 and covers the years 2018 to 2020. On average, the return rate over 3 years from 2018 to 2020 is 21.2%. After the survey of SLF, Livres Hebdo wrote an article about the book returns in France saying that "The highest return rate is for new products, with 61.7% of them ultimately being returned".

🇺🇸 United States Numbers

Unfortunately, we can't put every country here to show you all the numbers. If we do, the list would be endless - and less time to read our books. So besides France, we take a look at the USA with the following article on WordsRated:

It can be estimated that between 500,000 to 1 million of these new titles are published through traditional publishers and at least 1.7 million self-published titles each year are considered to be produced.

This is a number from 2022 and we can only see an increase in new titles, especially in self-published books. However, the number of returned books in the US is more difficult to find out. If you're interested in the numbers for other countries such as Spain, the Netherlands, New Zealand: this is an interesting research by EIBF.

🔎 What Happens to Returned Books?

Unfortunately, a part of the books returned will get destroyed.

Une partie de ces ouvrages retournés est malgré tout détruite : 13 % du volume de livres du flux « Aller » ont ainsi été pilonnés sur la période 2021-2022, selon le SNE. Ce qui représentait tout de même, toujours sur cette période, 25.000 tonnes de livres sur les 36.900 tonnes d'invendus, soit 67 % des ouvrages retournés... En 2023, 25.000 tonnes d'ouvrages auraient été pilonnées, soit 60 % de l'ensemble, à savoir 41.000 tonnes de livres retournés. Some of these returned books are nevertheless destroyed: 13% of the volume of books over the period 2021-2022, according to the SNE. This represented over this period 25,000 tons of books out of the 36,900 tons of unsold books, or 67% of the returned books... In 2023, 25,000 tons of books would have been destroyed, or 60% of the total, namely 41,000 tons of returned books. (source: ActuaLlité)

🌿 Our Decision at The Little Bookshop in Rennes

Looking at the numbers of books getting destroyed (13% is high!), we made a deliberate choice to not return our books. Besides the destruction of books (ouch, our hearts!), the return of books also has environmental impacts (especially transport). The environment is important to us and we try to do our best to help wherever we can. By choosing not to return books, we’re able to do this — and we’re proud to be part of a growing movement of independent bookshops in France that are also rethinking book returns to reduce waste.

Also, when you have a small shop, you can’t just order everything-everything (even though it’s difficult to choose!). We have to be careful with our selection and find the right books for our readers. We also like to give chances to less-known authors because they have less support for their amazing stories. And if there’s a book you really want to read and we don’t have it, we can always order it for you 😉

This blog post is written by The Little Bookshop, your bookshop for English books in Rennes.