The basics of the "stripped" book is if a store doesn't sell their paperbacks and they need to send them back, they don't send back the entire book. They rip the front cover off and send that back to the distributor. The store receives credit back for the cover. The remainder of the book (everything but the cover) is thrown away. So a book without a cover was never actually sold in the first place. At least that's how I understood it when I had to tear the covers off of dozens of books. :mad:

So a book without a cover has been fished out of a bin, or slipped into an employee's rucksack when no one was looking. Got it. Cheers all