Comment by conductr

Probably. I don't have any special knowledge of how it's handled. But, one thing that I know is frequently taking place in similar industries, and I imagine would be taking place here, is they slap a different binding on the books. So they get a set of retail ready, SKU/UPC/MSRP included prints, and they get the ones for the program out of the same print run. Of course, the books are often not new releases so "initial" may not be true - but they get to batch them and maximize volume at the time of print. There's other programs like this out there, my son get's a box of books shipped to him monthly from some subscription his grandparents signed up for, they're almost certainly negotiating pricing based on volume and the printer and publisher are likely using it to their advantage as well (trying to print as much at once as possible).