Could This Happen Here?

An Amazon book distributor closes shop on its 55,000 SF warehouse in England and abandons 5 million books. I guess it was just cheaper to give the books away rather than move them and try to sell them.

Used books seem like a pretty low margin item, but why didn't the landlord try to sell them to try to recoup some losses? Or sell the whole lot to another bookseller?

This sets a scary scenario of firms just going out of business and not bothering to clean up after themselves, leaving the landlords with the abandoned inventory and the costs associated with its disposal.