Ask John: What Are Those Strips Of Paper With Import Books?

Question:
When my friends and I buy Japanese manga and import books, we often find little pink or yellow slips of paper included that appear to have the price and some other information on them. What are they? What is that their designated purpose?

Answer:
These tags are for inventory control. In Japanese bookstores, the cashiers pull these tags out when you purchase the book. This explains the half-cicle cuts in the fold that create a handy little tab to pull on. The tags contain all of the publishing information for the book, including the title, author, price and ISBN number. Stores can then use these tags to keep track of which books they sell. You may want to save these tags, just in case, because a xerox of one of these tags should provide all the information necessary for a Japanese book-store to special-order a copy of the book the tag came from, assuming the book is still in print.