Michaels destroying feminist cross stitch books- wtf?

So I can't comment on why this may have happened, but as someone who used to work for a large craft chain, we destroyed books all the time. When books were being phased out for new ones, we'd have to tear up the old ones and throw them away, per a directive from the company. I know this is a common occurrence in book stores too. I agree that it's a waste...but I also know that there's not really a great solution, because if the books are donated, or sold for like 10 cents, the company's brand can be devalued and people will no longer be willing to pay full price for the books. Regardless of the motivation behind the recall, if Michael's decided to pull the books, it probably would have cost more/been more of a waste (with regards to shipping fees/fuel burned) to ship a few books from hundreds of stores. It's much cheaper to destroy them.

I can understand the author's disappointment regarding the timing/reasoning, but this is literally the life cycle of most physical books, so I'm surprised she didn't know that. (ETA: this sounds heartless but I just mean that these days, the value/price of a book reflects the idea/intellectual property more than its physical aspect.)

I don't even cross stitch, but now I want that book!!!

I just don't like that her followers are canceling Michael's and returning just bought items without a full statement from her publisher and or Michael's. 🤷‍♀️

Why are people so quick to go after a brand or company without all details revealed?

Having dealt with a bookstore for Marketing/Advertising, yes books that are no longer in rotation are destroyed. Just how it is.

Honestly, she should have been way more professional, taken a step back, talked to her publisher, then shared the details IF it was indeed due to the contents.

Corporate policy - They used to do it with out of date magazines when I worked there. They ripped the covers off (I think they got some sort of credit for it?) and trashed them.

And not just Michaels corporate policy -it is pretty standard in the publishing world, especially magazines and paperbacks. If you look at the page of a paperback book with all the copyright info (I know this page has a proper name, it's just not coming to mind right now), you will often see a comment like - If you bought this book without a cover, you should be aware that is is stolen property. It was reported as 'unsold and destroyed' to the publisher, and neither the author or the publisher has received any payment for this 'stripped book' (copied from a paperback I found on my bookcase)

I worked at a book store as a teen and just about every week we’d have a list of books that got tossed. We’d tear off the covers and the manager would look the other way if we wanted to take some home. But the rest went into the dumpster. It’s a common practice and didn’t target specific genres.

Agreed. My sister used to work for Barnes and Noble and she was so upset every time she had to remove the covers from books.

When I worked for Michael's, I felt like I wasn't trusted. After gathering things I was told to gather, the store manager made a coworker accompany me to receiving to make sure the items were put into the trash and immediately compacted. I felt like he presumed I was going to sneak in and steal them or something...if he had instructed me to do it, I would have followed orders. Destruction of phased out goods was required by policy.

At any rate, there was a big thing a few years back about 'penny items' because that's how they indicated items were due to be pulled and destroyed. Problem was, a lot of customers started to find them before staff could pull the items. Eventually they stopped marking anything down past 90% but it was also the birth of the grab bag and grab box policy given one of the dominant reasons for people getting onto the penny bandwagon was because they were pissed that those items were going to be destroyed rather than donated. That's still their current policy, so I don't believe that destruction of this particular item would fall in line with that UNLESS they had some sort of agreement with the company they work with. If it was a book in the front of the store rather than a book in the cross stitching aisle, those products aren't stocked by M's...think of it like Coca-Cola stocking their own products in a grocery store. M's has a 3rd party stock the books at the front of the store (which is why they'd always been banned from coupons, even after the coupon policy became more generous prior to the pandemic) and the company that stocks the books remain the owners of them.