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Returning Books as a form of Protest
There is a fascinating piece on the Publishers Weekly website about people who want to return Breaking Dawn because they felt betrayed by the lack of quality of the book. Apparently, these fans are discussing protest via returns. (Breaking Trust by Sara Nelson)
“The discussion about returns this past week, however, has meant something different: apparently there’s a very vocal group of readers trying to incite a riot of consumer returns of Stephenie Meyer’s just-released Breaking Dawn. Despite its excellent sales—Nielsen BookScan reports that the much-ballyhooed YA novel, which pubbed at midnight on Friday, August 1, sold 834,000 copies in one day—some consumers are so disappointed with the finale of the series that they feel they deserve their money back.”
“And the disappointment is not passive; it’s downright activist, to judge from a customer discussion blog on Amazon.com that had nearly 200 comments by last Friday. “If all of the unhappy fans returned their books,” one disgruntled reader wrote, “it would send a [strong] message to Little, Brown and Stephenie Meyer. Don’t let them profit from selling you badly-written, poorly-edited garbage.””
Now this fascinates me. Books and movies are one of the few things we don’t really return because we are disappointed in them. If a pair of shoes have the sole fall off due to lack of quality two days after purchase, then we return the shoes. If a book shows a similar lack of quality, very few would think to return it. They’d chalk it up to an impulse buy, a bad book, something to sell to the used bookstore, but rarely something to return.
I returned a book once because it disappointed me severely, to the point that I was angry. That book was Bella at Midnight. Maybe I was in a bad mood when I read it (I’d just moved cross country for three days and was looking for a good light read) but I hated that book so much I made a point of returning it the next morning. Maximum Ride - The Final Warning is a very tempting “return because I hated it” book as well, and if I’d paid money for Evernight instead of getting it as an ARC, I’d probably take it back as well. In all of those cases, I felt much the same as these Breaking Dawn readers, that these books had betrayed me on some basic level to the point where I wanted nothing to do with them. I’ve read plenty of bad books, books that I’ll never pick up agian or just want to ditch at Powells. But there are a few books that have gotten to me so much that I felt like I had to do something about it. Even if that something was just returning the book and writing a bad review.
I’m curious, are there any books you’ve felt betrayed by? Something that went past the level of just bad writing, to actually making you feel angry and hurt by how bad you felt the book was?
As a side note, did you know that you can return movie tickets? At least before the showing? I had to a few months back, and I was shocked. That’s not something I ever really thought about as a returnable item. Of course it depends on the theater, this was one of the chains.
Yes! I ordered a book called the Odessa Stone off amazon because it got such good reviews, I waited for weeks for it to arrive (I live in Australia) and it was a week late, I read it and struggled to read it over the next few weeks. I’m usually a very fast reader but I could barely force myself past the first few chapters, I kept reading, thinking it would improve, but it never did, and, after finishing it, I felt like I’d wasted my time and money and if I’d bought it from a local store I would’ve returned it.
(sorry for the long rambling reply!)
As a side note, I actually quite liked Breaking Dawn!
crichoux reply on August 21st, 2008:
I haven’t met anyone yet who particularly hated Breaking Dawn.. I’m bad and keep avoiding those books. My roommates would make fun of me if I read them and enjoyed them -_-.
I liked Breaking Dawn, too. It’s a surprise that so many people are throwing a fit about it.
I’ve never even contemplated returning a book. Although, I’m a stingy wimp and hardly ever buy books I haven’t read before. But still, it’s a new concept. And movie tickets–cool!
Kind of ironic, the mention of “Bella at Midnight”. I was just thinking to myself I should reread that sometime (mostly because I’ve forgotten the entire story).
crichoux reply on August 21st, 2008:
I should probably reread Bella at Midnight, because I’ve had it recommended to me a number of times, and I don’t know if outside influences were affecting my reading of it the first time through.
I know when I visited B. Dalton on my vacation, they and Barnes and Noble have a new ‘Returns’ policy that the clerk told me about.
As for me, I’d rather just take a book to the used store. If I read the book, that counts as ‘used’ enough for me to not want to return it where I got it. Since I can get a used book for store credit, it’s not a big deal to me.
I have returned books before, but only if I realized I bough it twice — twice as a gift (both Mom and Dad got me Stranger in a Strange Land and once I got the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire as a gift after I bought it) and once because I just walked out of the store when I realized I had bought Green Mars when I wanted Blue Mars.
There have been books I’ve been disappointed in, but mostly either because I didn’t look into the matter enough before buying (usually used — I don’t like trying new authors with new books) or because it’s not the books fault. (I.e. it wasn’t what I was expecting, but it wasn’t bad). Or else it was so over-hyped that it could have been a great book and still not lived up to expectations.
I actually liked Breaking Dawn as well, but I guess I could see how fans were let down by the ending.
Anyways, I don’t think I’ve ever been that upset by a book that I’ve wanted to return it. Sure there are books out there that feel like a complete waste of time to read, but the whole point of buying a book is to read it, and if you’ve read it, I think that product has been “used”, and you shouldn’t return it, no matter how bad it is.
But thats only my opinion…
I ordered the fourth book of Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn Chronicles from Australia a few years back, but ended up sending it back the day after opening it. It had so many charcaters, everywhere, that there was no way you could even remotely keep them straight. There was little development in terms of plot or characters and I was just hugely disappointed!