Book store shoplifting
Encyclopedia
Book store shoplifting is a problem for book sellers and has sometimes led stores to keep certain volumes behind store counters.
Shoplifters at book stores, also known as book shops, may be either amateur or professional thieves. Professionals target high-priced books and books that are easily resold, such as college textbooks.
In addition to shoplifting, thievery also has been due to pilfering by shipping personnel and burglary. Book stores also are victimized by thefts of merchandise and other items aside from books. At Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California, someone attempted to steal a security camera. At the Boulder Bookshop in Boulder, Colorado, prints hung in the bathroom and plants have been stolen.
"Shoplifting is a particular problem," said Patricia Van Osdol, owner of Wellington Books in Portland, Oregon. "It can be disastrous in a small store like this."
Ron Rosenbaum, an author and New York Observer
columnist, wrote in 1999 that Barnes & Noble
had a list of these authors whose books are the most frequently stolen from that book-store chain (or perhaps the Union Square
store in the chain, where his source, "a helpful clerk", worked): Martin Amis
, Paul Auster
, George Bataille, William S. Burroughs
, Italo Calvino
, Raymond Chandler
, Michel Foucault
, Dashiell Hammett
, Jack Kerouac
, Jeanette Winterson
, but none more frequently than books by Charles Bukowski
.
In 2008, Constant gave this list, which he called "pretty much the authoritative top five, the New York Times best-seller list of stolen books": Bukowski, Jim Thompson
, Philip K. Dick
, and Burroughs, along with "any graphic novel". Constant wrote that other popular targets are books by Hunter S. Thompson and the Beats, Chuck Palahniuk
, Haruki Murakami
, and Mark Z. Danielewski
, and the most-stolen books tend to be a steady group with little variation over time. As of late 2009, Danielewski's House of Leaves was the most frequently stolen book from Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California, according to a store manager there.
In the United Kingdom, The Virgin Suicides
by Jeffrey Eugenides
was the most-shoplifted book, according to a January 2008 article in The Telegraph.
St. Mark’s Bookshop in the East Village
of Manhattan, like Barnes & Noble, moves frequently-stolen titles behind the counter. At that book store, as of late 2009, the books behind the counter included works by Amis, Bukowski, Burroughs, Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo and Jack Kerouac. Sometimes the staff moves books back to the shelves with the idea that a book's popularity for theft may lessen over time. "Amis went out and came right back," a store manager told a writer for The New York Times.
books were new and popular items in book stores, they were among the top targets of thieves, he said.
Brian Zimmerman, associate general manager at the San Francisco State University book store, said thieves there were much more likely to be students, but professional thieves took more books and targeted volumes with higher prices. Thieves have been known to take whole stacks of books at once. According to a 1991 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer,
studies showed that the "casual thief", defined as "not a professional but more than a one-timer", accounted for 70 to 75 percent of shoplifting.
In 1992, the Los Angeles Times
reported that thieves were so brazen in New York City that just outside St. Mark's Bookshop, "sidewalk peddlers openly ply books — many of them still bearing St. Mark's telltale stamp — at half off the prices inside the store.
In the early 1990s, book store owners in New York and California accused second-hand book stores of organizing theft rings to shoplift titles for resale. Drama Book Shop in Manhattan lost 533 books with a total sales price of $10,873 from January 1 to May 8, 1991. One thief told store officials that a ring organized by a second-hand store had been assigned to steal books from the Drama Book Shop, according to Rozanne Seelan, co-owner of the victimized store.
Abbie Hoffman
wrote Steal This Book
in 1970 and published in 1971.
Shoplifters at book stores, also known as book shops, may be either amateur or professional thieves. Professionals target high-priced books and books that are easily resold, such as college textbooks.
In addition to shoplifting, thievery also has been due to pilfering by shipping personnel and burglary. Book stores also are victimized by thefts of merchandise and other items aside from books. At Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California, someone attempted to steal a security camera. At the Boulder Bookshop in Boulder, Colorado, prints hung in the bathroom and plants have been stolen.
Concerns of independent book sellers
Owners of small, independent book stores have said they find shoplifting particularly bothersome. According to Paul Constant, a Seattle book-store employee, "I know a few booksellers who have literally been driven a little bit crazy at the thought of their inventory evaporating out the door, and with good reason: An overabundance of shoplifters can put bookstores out of business. One local bookstore owner can famously talk about shoplifters with total strangers for hours, with the detail and passion that some people reserve for sexual conquests.""Shoplifting is a particular problem," said Patricia Van Osdol, owner of Wellington Books in Portland, Oregon. "It can be disastrous in a small store like this."
Books frequently stolen
According to several sources, in the United States certain books, or books by certain authors, are much more likely to be stolen than others, although there are no hard statistics on the subject. The Bible has been cited as perhaps the most frequently stolen book.Ron Rosenbaum, an author and New York Observer
New York Observer
The New York Observer is a weekly newspaper first published in New York City on September 22, 1987, by Arthur L. Carter, a very successful former investment banker with publishing interests. The Observer focuses on the city's culture, real estate, the media, politics and the entertainment and...
columnist, wrote in 1999 that Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble, Inc. is the largest book retailer in the United States, operating mainly through its Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain of bookstores headquartered at 122 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District in Manhattan in New York City. Barnes & Noble also operated the chain of small B. Dalton...
had a list of these authors whose books are the most frequently stolen from that book-store chain (or perhaps the Union Square
Union Square
Union Square may refer to:Asia* Union Square * Union Square station on Dubai MetroCanada* Union Square, Nova ScotiaUnited States* Union Square, Baltimore, Maryland* Union Square * Union Square, San Francisco, California...
store in the chain, where his source, "a helpful clerk", worked): Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
, Paul Auster
Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions and The Brooklyn Follies...
, George Bataille, William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
, Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...
, Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
, Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
, Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...
, Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
, Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson OBE is a British novelist.-Early years:Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted on 21 January 1960. She was raised in Accrington, Lancashire, by Constance and John William Winterson...
, but none more frequently than books by Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
.
In 2008, Constant gave this list, which he called "pretty much the authoritative top five, the New York Times best-seller list of stolen books": Bukowski, Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson (writer)
James Myers Thompson was an American author and screenwriter, known for his pulp crime fiction....
, Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
, and Burroughs, along with "any graphic novel". Constant wrote that other popular targets are books by Hunter S. Thompson and the Beats, Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk
Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is an American transgressional fiction novelist and freelance journalist. He is best known for the award-winning novel Fight Club, which was later made into a film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter...
, Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami
is a Japanese writer and translator. His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered him critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and Jerusalem Prize among others.He is considered an important figure in postmodern literature...
, and Mark Z. Danielewski
Mark Z. Danielewski
Mark Z. Danielewski, born March 5, 1966 in New York City, New York, is an American author, best known for his debut novel House of Leaves...
, and the most-stolen books tend to be a steady group with little variation over time. As of late 2009, Danielewski's House of Leaves was the most frequently stolen book from Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California, according to a store manager there.
In the United Kingdom, The Virgin Suicides
The Virgin Suicides
The Virgin Suicides is the 1993 debut novel by American writer Jeffrey Eugenides. The story, which is set in Grosse Pointe, Michigan during the 1970s, centers on the suicides of five sisters. The Lisbon girls' suicides fascinate their community as their neighbors struggle to find an explanation for...
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer. Eugenides is most known for his first two novels, The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex . His novel The Marriage Plot was published in October, 2011.-Life and career:Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan,...
was the most-shoplifted book, according to a January 2008 article in The Telegraph.
St. Mark’s Bookshop in the East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
of Manhattan, like Barnes & Noble, moves frequently-stolen titles behind the counter. At that book store, as of late 2009, the books behind the counter included works by Amis, Bukowski, Burroughs, Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo and Jack Kerouac. Sometimes the staff moves books back to the shelves with the idea that a book's popularity for theft may lessen over time. "Amis went out and came right back," a store manager told a writer for The New York Times.
In comparison with books stolen from public libraries
Public libraries have a much different set of frequently stolen books. In the United States, how-to books are more often the targets of thieves, as are books about witchcraft, the occult, UFOs or astrology, according to Larra Clark, a spokeswoman for the American Library Association, who asked members which books were most often stolen. Of the 70 libraries across the United States who responded to her query in 2001, none mentioned books by Charles Bukowski. An official from a prison library responded that dictionaries and poetry were the most frequently stolen types of books at that institution.Theft by professionals
According to Tom Cushman, a New York book-store manager interviewed in 2005, factors influencing book thefts included high resale value and whether or not the book was displayed in an area difficult for the store clerks to watch. When Harry PotterHarry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
books were new and popular items in book stores, they were among the top targets of thieves, he said.
Brian Zimmerman, associate general manager at the San Francisco State University book store, said thieves there were much more likely to be students, but professional thieves took more books and targeted volumes with higher prices. Thieves have been known to take whole stacks of books at once. According to a 1991 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer,
studies showed that the "casual thief", defined as "not a professional but more than a one-timer", accounted for 70 to 75 percent of shoplifting.
In 1992, the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
reported that thieves were so brazen in New York City that just outside St. Mark's Bookshop, "sidewalk peddlers openly ply books — many of them still bearing St. Mark's telltale stamp — at half off the prices inside the store.
In the early 1990s, book store owners in New York and California accused second-hand book stores of organizing theft rings to shoplift titles for resale. Drama Book Shop in Manhattan lost 533 books with a total sales price of $10,873 from January 1 to May 8, 1991. One thief told store officials that a ring organized by a second-hand store had been assigned to steal books from the Drama Book Shop, according to Rozanne Seelan, co-owner of the victimized store.
Counter measures
Book stores at San Francisco State University and City College of San Francisco train their employees who are examining books being returned or sold to the stores to look for price tag stickers, books that don't seem to have been used, and anyone offering to sell multiple copies of a single title. When store employees approach customers to ask whether they need help, they also discourage theft, according to ZimmermanReactions of authors
Jeffrey Eugenides and Paul Auster both laughed when journalists asked them about being some of the authors whose books are most shoplifted. "It's one of those things authors argue about" among themselves, Eugenides said, adding that he and Auster had discussed their status as authors of frequently stolen books.Abbie Hoffman
Abbie Hoffman
Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was a political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ....
wrote Steal This Book
Steal This Book
-Advice on dissidence:The book includes advice on such topics as growing cannabis, starting a pirate radio station, living in a commune, stealing food, shoplifting, stealing credit cards, preparing a legal defense, making pipe bombs, and obtaining a free buffalo from the Department of the Interior...
in 1970 and published in 1971.