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“In the nineteen-nineties, a different leviathan held publishers and independent bookstores in its grasp: chain stores, led by Barnes & Noble. When Amazon emerged, publishers in New York suddenly had a new buyer that paid quickly, sold their backlist as well as new titles, and, unlike traditional bookstores, made very few returns. Publishers must buy back unsold inventory from retailers, an archaic and costly practice that one ex-Amazon employee called “an absurdly inefficient model, worse than my uncle sending his laundry home from college.”
