Statistic on Returns

On GalleyCat, from the article Who Knew? Eliminating Returns Reduces The Book Business's Carbon Footprint:

In 2005, 31% of the roughly 1.5 billion books printed in the US were returned to publishers.

That's nearly one-third of all the books shipped! As for the reason the return policy is currently needed, GalleyCat wrote an article called Why Printing Fewer, Non-Returnable Books May Not Save the World. In the article, Wiley marketer Andrew Wheeler is quoted saying:

If there are three books on a shelf, and two customers come looking for it, two sales will result. If there is one book on a shelf, and two customers come, one of them is out of luck—and so is the bookseller. You end up with returns because it's impossible to always have precisely one book for every purchaser in the right place at the right time.