The living dead of the book world.

Powell’s Bookstore co-owner Brad Jonas is standing among 50,000 books collected in three cavernous convention rooms and informs me — with his usual bearish grin — that he has located my book, Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns. Normally I’d be impressed with such ferreting, but this is the 16th annual Chicago International Remainder & Overstock Book Exposition. No author wants to find her book here.

Welcome to the used car lot of the book world or — as I see it — the publishing world’s version of limbo, the waiting ground for books in between bookstore and pulp fire pit. These books are either overproduced, undersold or their publishers just want to clear their warehouses for newer, flashier models. With stacks piled across the vast expanse underneath the Michigan Avenue Hilton, this is the largest remainder book sales convention in the world.
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As we pass through the aisles, I spot best-selling literary authors like Carol Shields and Ursula K. LeGuin. There’s even candy for the masses like Madonna: An Intimate Portrait. Among the piles, I was surprised to see Danny Pearl: A Mighty Heart by Marianne Pearl, which is being made into a movie starring Angelina Jolie. How could this book not command an audience? Jonas explained that the publisher probably wanted to publish a new version with movie clips on its cover. So the older versions are dumped on the secondary market of used books. There are also “hurt” books here — books that were damaged in some way, whether it’s a slight tear or a bent jacket.

This reads in parts like a tour of the underworld, received by a horrified, wide-eyed innocent and conducted by a shrouded death-like figure pointing at all the lost souls.