Shopping is a fun indulgence in life. You look at a product and examine it, see from the description if you want to purchase it, check the price, and then buy it.
When you purchase any product new, what do you expect? You give your money, take the product home, and it should now look brand new, unused, undamaged. Most products have the benefit of being enclosed in plastic containers or boxes, so that when opened, the packaging may have to be cut or torn, but it will be discarded to leave the shiny, new product behind.
With books, this packaging doesn't exist. You're buying the physical product with either the price tag already slapped on the cover, or else in some rare instances the price is on the shelf label and it rings up the correct amount at the register. Either way, when you get home the tag typically comes off, and you still have a brand new looking book for your money.
Unfortunately some book sellers don't seem to have a great deal of sense when it comes to the price tags.
- Don't Cover Up The Product Details/Selling Point
There have been numerous times when I have looked at a book, wondering if I should buy it from the product description on the back, only to be hindered from reading it because of a sticker right dab in the middle of the synopsis! This serves no purpose other than to irritate the potential buyer and make it less likely for the book to be purchased. If I can't read what an unfamiliar book is about, then I am of course less likely to be inclined to purchase it. Why would a store cover the description of a product they want people to buy? The description is the selling point, why cover that up?
- Don't put the price sticker on raised font on the cover
Walmart is notoriously guilty of this practice. From a retail point of view they may think it makes sense to slap the price sticker on the front cover, top right hand side. The price is easily seen this way, easy to tear off when getting home.
From a bibliophile's point of view, however, it's soon learned that at the top right of most book covers, there is typically a title of the book or an author name. This poses no issues for the price tag generally, but some readers also come to know that some publishers print books that have slightly raised font to appear more appealing to potential buyers. And when you try to take off the (usually easy to remove) price tag from a raised font cover, the book cover is almost always damaged.
The result? You bought a product that is now permanently damaged because you wanted to take the ugly price tag off the cover.
Here is a recent example of the many times this has happened with raised font:
For some reason with raised font, the cover seems to come up with the tag. I had a book recently where on the font cover, just the raised font part had the paint removed. In the above book it's the metallic section.
This never seems to happen if the book does not have raised font. It baffles the mind why a retailer would do something that would damage a product when bought, or why a retailer would cover up a product description with the price.
Publishers pay additional money to market a book by giving it a raised font, putting a little something extra special in a product to make it that much more appealing. I doubt they had this side effect in mind when the cover collides with a price tag.
In addition, they pay someone to write the synopsis of a book, trying to make it come across as appealing as possible to entice the reader into making a purchase. When the retailer covers the selling point, it defeats that purpose.
Every reader has their rant, their pet peeve. This is big one of mine.
