'Used Book' : A Sonnet by Julie Kane

USED BOOK

What luck—an open bookstore up ahead
as rain lashed awnings over Royal Street,
and then to find the books were secondhand,
with one whole wall assigned to poetry;
and then, as if that wasn’t luck enough,
to find, between Jarrell and Weldon Kees,
the blue-on-cream, familiar backbone of
my chapbook, out of print since ’83—
its cover very slightly coffee-stained,
but aging (all in all) no worse than flesh
through all those cycles of the seasons since
its publication by a London press.
Then, out of luck, I read the name inside:
The man I thought would love me till I died.


Julie Kane is an Associate Professor in English at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. 'Used Book' won first prize in the 2007 Open Poetry International Sonnet Competition. Her book Rythym and Booze was selected by Maxine Kumin in 2003 as one of the five volumes published in the National Poetry Series.

The poem powerfully coveys the serendipity inherent in the used bookstore experience. It is not only what you might find while browsing the shelves but what might be inside what you find that moves you. Here, by finding one of her works, Kane is transported back to the 'familiar backbone' of her past and ponders the graceful evolution of her life and the life of the book. The reverie is shattered; however, once the book is opened and the pain of the past rushes in.

This can't happen online. This poem is a shining example of the power of the bookshop and the impact it has on the lives of many of the people who stroll up and down its aisles.

82% Still Curl : Zogby Polls Readers

Random House hired Zogby International to get out there and find out what is going on in the world of reading and book-buying. They polled a little over 8,000 people and here are some of the highlights and lowlights:

82% say they still prefer to "curl up with a printed book" rather than reading online or using an e-reader or smartphone.

Only 3% of those surveyed currently own an e-book reader, and only 4% have plans to purchase one.
A whopping 80% reported that they have no plans to purchase an e-book reader!

Independent bookselling did not fare so well in the survey either:
The top three retail choices for buying books were buying online (77%), buying books from a chain bookstore (76%), and buying from an independent bookstores (49%).

When asked if they "regularly" shop at an independent bookseller only 33% said yes and 64% said no!

When asked if "the trend toward bookstores with a 'community center' feel make you want to visit and linger at bookstores," 41% said yes and 43% said they it didn't make much of a difference.

Most book buyers head to a bookstore with a purpose but often they buy something in addition to what they came for.
77% say they end up buying something else. These unplanned book purchases are heavily influenced by subject matter (48%) though the book's design also plays a key role.

30% of the readers surveyed said that they had spent less time reading books over the past year 23% reporting that they had spent more time and 53% said that of the books they bought last year between and one and five of them have yet to be read.

In the end, the good news is that the printed book still reigns supreme, the bad news is that where and how people buy them has changed drastically.


Story at the ABA's Bookselling This Week
Random House press release
Zogby International's Poll final report (pdf)

Last Call, Bohemia

In this month's Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens considers the role of Bohemia in the health of a city and mourns its loss to gentrification. Included in his catalog of endangered Bohemiana, bookstores (emphasis mine):

It isn’t possible to quantify the extent to which society and culture are indebted to Bohemia. In every age in every successful country, it has been important that at least a small part of the cityscape is not dominated by bankers, developers, chain stores, generic restaurants, and railway terminals. This little quarter should instead be the preserve of—in no special order—insomniacs and restaurants and bars that never close; bibliophiles and the little stores and stalls that cater to them; alcoholics and addicts and deviants and the proprietors who understand them; aspirant painters and musicians and the modest studios that can accommodate them; ladies of easy virtue and the men who require them; misfits and poets from foreign shores and exiles from remote and cruel dictatorships. Though it should be no disadvantage to be young in such a quartier, the atmosphere should not by any means discourage the veteran. It was Jean-Paul Sartre who to his last days lent the patina to the Saint-Germain district of Paris, just as it is Lawrence Ferlinghetti, last of the Beats, who by continuing to operate his City Lights bookstore in San Francisco’s North Beach still gives continuity with the past.

Unusual Shelving Methods

Picking up (somewhat) where Michael's last post left off, Idlewild Books, a new travel bookstore in NYC, has devised an innovative shelving technique for its shop:

“I was in a chain bookstore and realized I would have to go to five different sections to get what I needed—a travel guide, a map, a language book, a novel,” he noted. “At Idlewild, everything will be shelved by country, and in the case of the United States, by state—that way people will be able to browse according to the place of their interest.”

Del Vecchio emphasized that he believes literature about a country—be it a novel or a political biography—can be just as useful as a guidebook. His product mix will be at least 40% armchair travel titles: “Guidebooks you really can buy almost anywhere,” he explained, “but books on politics and culture are often much harder to find. Our section on Turkey might have guides, maps, a history of the Blue Mosque, a biography of Ataturk, and novels by Pamuk and others.” Graham Greene’s novels won’t be shelved in the U.K. section, said Del Vecchio, but in Cuba and Mexico, where the books are set.

Reminds me of a more permanent (and useful) version of what Abode Books of San Francisco did when it allowed artist Chris Cobb to rearrange the books in their shop by color:


Further reading? See: LUNACY AND THE ARRANGEMENT OF BOOKS by Terry Belanger.

Meanwhile, Boing Boing has an image of one of the most beautiful bookcases I've seen in a long time. Perfect for organizing your books however you see fit.

Stimulated Reading

The Written Nerd has been one of my favorite bookseller blogs for some time now. The author, Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, details her experiences working at one of NYC's best independent bookstores (including this jealousy-inducing run-in with Jonathan Lethem), all the while planning to "have a bookstore of my own in Brooklyn."

Stockton recently won the $15,000 Power Up! business-plan competition sponsored by the Brooklyn Public Library in order to help bring her bookstore plans closer to fruition. And closer to fruition they are:

I opened a small business money market account with the prize money, which will also be the depository for other funds raised. And he gave me the paperwork to fill out for a great big (to me) small business loan application. I'm hoping to get that in by mid-June, at the same time as I'm looking for retail spaces.

In the meantime, I've made some other great business friends: the Retail Committee of the fabulous Fort Greene Association. It turns out that the beautiful, developing neighborhood of Fort Greene wants a bookstore almost as bad as I want to create one, so I'll be working with them on finding a space, building community support, and doing some more fundraising.

To that end, Stockton has created a rather clever fundraising campaign. Stimulated Reading is hoping to find "investors" to:

[...] use your [IRS] stimulus package to become an investor in an independent bookstore -- specifically, the one I'm creating in Brooklyn.

The website will explain the details -- basically, you can choose an amount to kick in and receive some Book Nerd swag and/or buying power at the future bookstore. And using your rebate in this way is a way not only to show your support for my little literary project, but to stimulate the economy through supporting small and independent businesses.

It certainly seems that Stockton has the chops to successfully pull-off her endevour. Besides her bookselling experience and prize-winning business plan, she is (as her FAQ explains) "on the executive board of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association, the chair of the Emerging Leaders Project, [and] a member of the ABA Digital Task Force." And having read her blog for the past two years, I have no doubt she will be successful.

How Would You Like Your Book Today?

The window of Bookman's Corner in Chicago.

via

Have You Read That Song?

The end-cap of the week award goes to 24 year old Martha Pettite of San Francisco's The Booksmith. Her display, titled "My Awesome Literary Mix CD," pairs 18 literary works with a musical counterpart.

Pettite says she was "inspired by the song Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush; Todd (also a Booksmith staffer) and I were discussing what a great song it is and I relayed the story of a friend who also loved the song but had no clue that it was a reference to Emile Bronte's novel"


1.”Killing an Arab” –The Cure (The Stranger by Albert Camus)

2. “Tear in Your Hand”-Tori Amos (Sandman series by Neil Gaiman)

3.”Wuthering Heights”-Kate Bush (Wuthering Heights by Emile Bronte)

4.“Ghost of Tom Joad”-Bruce Springsteen (Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck)

5.”Paranoid Android”-Radiohead (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams)

6.”Mr.Tambourine Man”-Bob Dylan (Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson)*

7.”Satellite of Love”-Lou Reed (Ghostwritten by David Mitchell)*

8.”The River”-P.J. Harvey (The River by Flannery O’Connor)

9.”Myla Goldberg”-The Decemberists (Bee Season by Myla Goldberg)

10.”Ground Beneath Her Feet”-U2 (Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie)

11.”Norwegian Wood”-The Beatles (Norwegian Wood by Hakuri Murakami)

12.”Disorder”-Joy Division (Crash by J.G. Ballard)

13.”Girlfriend in a Coma”-The Smiths (Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland)

14.”La Pastie de la Bourgeoisie”-Belle & Sebastian (Catcher in the Rye by J.G. Salinger)

15.”Holland 1945”-Neutral Milk Hotel (Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank)

16.”Alice”-Tom Waits (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll)

17.”Little Green”-Joni Mitchell (Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore)

18.”My Vien Ilin”-Ted Leo & the Pharmacists (The Odyssey by Homer)

"You'll never find us and we're rarely open."

Lloyd and Lenore Dickman are booksellers with perhaps one million books. But they don't advertise, don't keep regular hours, and are located on a farm in rural Wisconsin. Oh, and one of their twelve (!?) buildings-full-of-books is in a former manure tank remodeled to look like a castle. Bill Geist recently profiled this charming and wildly-endearing couple for CBS.

Now, I have to go check plane fares to Wisconsin...

UPDATE (5/23/08): Recently came across the store's exact contact info/location: County Road K in Markesan, WI. 920-398-3375.

Tainted Independent : Trouble at the Strand

Kimberly Thorpe exposes some significant structural flaws at New York's legendary independent book store in her cover story in the current issue of the New York Press.

Allegations of racism and unfair labor practices abound with much of the heat being focused on Nancy Bass Wyden, the daughter of longtime Strand owner Fred Bass and wife of Oregon senator Ron Wyden, who interestingly enough is "widely known for his impassioned support of equal opportunity in the workplace."

Most people interviewed for the piece refused to give their name for fear of retaliation though all believe "that the problems at the Strand stemmed from a single source: Nancy Bass Wyden. They believe she has worked harder than anyone to transform the Strand from an intellectual oasis to a profit-producing machine."

Before coming home to help her dad Bass Wyden got her MBA from the University of Wisconsin and spent three years working at Exxon honing her corporate skills. Going from working for a giant oil company to running a giant independent book store is alone a recipe for disaster.

“They focus more on making money than on the enjoyment of running a bookstore,” said Trexler Chisholm, 26, who works in the rare books room on the third floor.

One of Bass Wyden's major initiatives was to ramp up the Strands books by the yard program, the "selling of books arranged decoratively on shelves to the rich and famous," which has nothing to do with books and everything to do with interior design. It just doesn't seem to be about the books anymore.

Yes, profits are up at the Starnd and business is good but those "profits stem from a salary structure that almost seems to push employees out the door."

Is there a point when a bookstore becomes too big to remain truly independent? Does size matter? Can there be a large independent book store with a Costco-style approach to their employees?

Barbara Hodgson: Trading in Memories and Other Ways of Seeing Books

In her new book Trading in Memories: Travels Through a Scavenger's Favorite Places Barbara Hodgson takes us on an unforgettable trip around the world. From the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul to an ephemera show in Portland, Oregon we get a front row seat as Hodgson works her magic unearthing relics of material cultural. As the collector knows, the pursuit, in many cases, is as fulfilling as the acquisition.

The fruit of travel is in "collecting fragments of people's material lives" says Hodgson in the introduction; in Naples it was tearing posters off the walls, in Portland it was a mugshot, in Fez El-Djedid is was an portable Arabic typewriter, in France she was on the the trail of Pierre Loti (the image above is of an authentic Japanese pagoda Loti had installed in his house).

Hodgson "believes that it is in the streets, bookstores, and markets where the city tantalizingly and coyly unveils its real past and most intimate self" and she places each journey within the perfect amount of historical context that you wish she would keep on going; one more stall, one more city. In a world increasingly bent on the disposable Hodgson proves that value remains in much of what we leave behind. Move over Madonna we have us a new Material Girl!

**************************************************************************

An exhibit of Hodgson's work, "Barbara Hodgson: Other Ways of Seeing Books", runs through April at Wessel & Lieberman.

The exhibit features her recently released collaboration with Claudia Cohen The Temperamental Rose and Other Ways of Seeing Color which is undoubtedly one of the most beautifully executed fine press books of 2007.

For the exhibition, Hodgson has created a limited edition keepsake, "The Temperamental Rose: An Experiment with Light". Each copy is hand-colored with a selection of lightfast and fugitive watercolors. It is designed to be exposed to the sun over a period of a year to demonstrate the effect of light on pigments.

Hodgson has also designed seven unique dust jackets for Trading Memories each containing material found during her journey.

There will be a reception for Barbara Hodgson at W&L this Thursday night from 6-8pm.

Trading In Memories website
Brief interview with Hodgson

The Annoying Bookstore Contingent

Over at Bookgasm Rod Lott has posted his list of "The 9 Most Annoying People I Always See at the Bookstore."

"I think the real reason behind the booksellers' declining fortunes is due to the people who crap in their public bathrooms. And who sit on the floor in the sci-fi section. And who go there to "study." says Lott.

The 9 offenders are:

Coffee Drinkers
Dumpers
Overly Eager Employees
First-Timers
Aisle Sitters
Couch Sitters
Study Groups
Halitosis Checkout Guy
Ol' Whistlenose

Lott deals with each of these in depth.

I would add a few others:

The Cell Phoners- People who have no clue that their private life is of little interest to fellow browsers and who are completely unaware that their cell phone conversations are completely disruptive to the people around them.

The Repeat Offenders- those who visit on a regular basis to peruse the shelves and rarely, if ever, buy anything.

The Independent Killers- they scout your shelves for books of interest and then go online to buy at a cheaper price.

and

The Members of the Church of False Hope- these are the ones who come in and start the conversation with I have a book that I am interested in selling and I looked online and... Invariably their hopes are dashed when you enlighten them to the realities of the marketplace.

Thanks to Beatrice for the lead.

The Dark Side of Seattle's Rise in the Publishing World

Is there a downside to Seattle's anointment as one of the most influential cities in the publishing world?

Julie Bick's recent piece in the New York Times Book Lovers Ask, What's Seattle's Secret? paints only a partial picture of the effect the new bookselling triumvirate; Amazon-Starbucks- Costco, has had on the world of publishing and its "increasing influence of what America reads."

There is no doubting the merits of Seattle as a literary town, books and book culture have played a significant role in the city's rise from an outpost to a leading 21st century city but there is doubt as to whether these new business models are actually helping the literary cause.

Both Amazon and Costco have played a role in dismantling the traditional pricing structure of books. These new pricing schemes have played a large part in the demise of many independent booksellers. It takes a herculean effort on the part of new bookstores to survive on this new playing field. Luckily, here in Seattle we have enough of a base of independent-minded book-loving people that continue to support the remaining bookstores.

Also, though Amazon provides an unparalleled selection there is no physical component, no opportunity for the tactile experience that historically was such an integral part of bookselling and book buying. On the other hand, while both Starbucks and Costco do provide the physical experience there is a very limited selection. Starbucks offers up one book at a time while Costco offers up a limited number of books on table displays within their vast warehouses of consumer goods.

Yes, each of these companies plays a different part in the publishing puzzle yet each in their own way contribute to the winnowing of the independent community bookshop. The very bookshops that are part of the foundation of the city, part of the fabric of the city which fosters the atmosphere that leads to the creation of these companies in the first place.

Lastly, Bick talks with Kim Ricketts who owns a book promotion company here in Seattle that brings authors directly to corporate clients. This 'literary catering' approach completely bypasses the independent bookshops and does very little to support the local book community. Though it may be seen as a good corporate perk it has a negative effect on the local bookstores. Many of these authors are no longer giving readings at the book store, they are giving them at corporate offices. If these companies truly wanted to support the local bookstores they would schedule the reading at the bookstore and line up their shuttle vans to bring their employees to and fro.

Bauman Rare Books Bets on Vegas

Last week it was announced that the Reading Room at Mandalay Bay, the last independent bookstore in Las Vegas, was closing its doors. This week word comes that Bauman Rare Books, one of the preeminent antiquarian booksellers, is opening a store at Shoppes at the Palazzo. The Palazzo is home to some of the world's premier luxury brands and Bauman is hoping to fit right in.

Those of you who read the Book Review section of the Sunday New York Times are familiar with Bauman's frequent back page ad offering various hi-spots of collectible books.

They might be the only bookseller with a PR firm on the payroll and it seems to be working. They are clearly positioning themselves as the dominant luxury brand in the rare book market. With their home store in Philadelphia, their showroom on Madison Avenue in New York and now the shop in Vegas Bauman seems confident that the antiquarian market will continue to grow and prosper. Bauman says that rare book collecting "is a conservative market that affords exceptional value. For the price of a painting you can have a library."

The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) should take heed and like Bauman work on positioning themselves as the place where many of the best books in the world live.

Bauman press release on the Vegas opening.
Las Vegas Sun article: "Bookstores aren't our thing, but Vegas has literary life"

The Cassidy 18: A Bookseller Reflects on His First Year

A little over year ago Brian Cassidy took over the Cannery Row Old Book Co. in Monterey, California and set up shop.

His recent blog post 18 Things I've Learned This Year (Or: 2007, A Bookseller’s Year in Review) is packed with little nuggets of bookselling wisdom and is a must read (and comprehend) for anyone who thinks that the bookselling life might be for them.

The Cassidy 18:

1) I will never run out of books. Never. There are always more books to be bought.

2) A corollary: There are always more GOOD books to be bought. If I feel like I’m not getting many of them, I’m not working hard enough.

3) I will never catalog all the books I have. Never.

4) I will always be messy. Always. Piles of books and paper are my destiny.

5) People who haggle over a five dollar book were never going to buy anything anyway.

6) Books ain’t money. Books don’t even make me money. I make me money. My overhead, time, and expertise create value. Please keep that in mind next time you think I’m being unreasonable offering you $100 for a book I’ll sell for $300. If you would like to rent a space and buy a reference library and catalog your book and list it on the internet and drag it to book fairs and wait who-knows-how-long to sell it, please be my guest. But if you want money today, please don’t insult me by suggesting you’re somehow being cheated.

7) Note to self: never give estimates of what you might pay for books over the phone or via email. ALWAYS have the books in hand first. Related: an annoyingly high percentage of people who bring in their books to “sell” only want a free appraisal.

8) “No, you can’t leave the books I don’t want here. Please, I really must insist. Seriously, have you looked behind this counter?” (See #s 1,3, and 5)

9) A first catalog is like falling in love - everything about it seems easy and fun and exciting.

10) A second catalog is more like marriage - a lot more work and a lot less exciting. But done well (fingers crossed), a lot more satisfying.

11) I still get a little thrill at diving into a box of new acquisition. I doubt this will ever go away or get old.

12) Nor, for that matter, will the little pang of dread when I remember I have to catalog most of them.

13) Shelving books is oddly calming - almost meditative.

14) Book fairs are a lot more work than they look like - a friggin’ lot of work. Two days (at least) to pack, a day to set up, two days (usually) to exhibit, then break-down, maybe a couple of days of travel, and then unpacking all those books you brought once you return. Even one-day local fairs require about a full week of work. Even so…

15) I love book fairs. Being in a roomful of dedicated dealers and serious buyers is just about my favorite way to spend a day.

16) I can’t tell you how many people come into the shop and tell me how great it is that I’m here and how much they love bookstores and how awful it is that so many are closing. Then they leave without buying a thing. This happens at least a couple times a week. I will never get this.

17) Related to #1 and 2: More and more I understand this is a business about customers, not books. To a large degree anyone can get books (witness the explosion of people calling themselves “booksellers”). What separates the successful dealer from the one who bitches and moans all the time? One has customers, the other doesn’t. The question is not whether you have books or not, the question is do you have anyone to sell them to.

18) I love my job.

Books Thriving: Online and Off

A new study released from Nielsen touts that 41% of all internet purchases worldwide were for books, an increase of 7% in the last two years and the number of people who shop online has grown 40% in the same two years.

“Some of the biggest buyers of books on the Internet are from developing countries—China, Brazil, Vietnam and Egypt—indicating massive growth potential for online retailers that can specifically target these fast-growing markets" says Jonathan Carson of Nielsen Online.

Here at home books made up 38% of all online purchases.

While sales climb online sales at brick and mortar bookstores were up in November for the 5th consecutive month. Sales rose 7.5%, to $1.19 billion, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Books outpaced the gain in sales for the entire retail segment by about 1%.

Abebooks.com one of the leading online book e-tailers saw an 11% gain in sales last year with total sales on the site reaching $190 million.

So where do we go from here? What about the future?

In a recent piece in New York Times Magazine, Keeping It Real, James Gleick gives us a little glimpse. Though his piece focuses on the recent auction of the Magna Carta at Sotheby's it is not much of a leap to see the "magical value" he talks about being applied to printed books.

Gleick says:

"The same free flow that makes information cheap and reproducible helps us treasure the sight of information that is not. A story gains power from its attachment, however tenuous, to a physical object. The object gains power from the story. The abstract version may flash by on a screen, but the worn parchment and the fading ink make us pause. The extreme of scarcity is intensified by the extreme of ubiquity."

So while the race is on to free the content from the book, the actual book itself, the original house for the content, becomes in fact more desirable.

Viva la books.

The Book Wizard of Salt Lake City

In their latest issue, SLUG (SaltLakeUnderGround) magazine profiles one of my favorite booksellers, Ken Sanders. The piece written by Erik Lopez is titled Ken Sanders: Pimp of the Printed Word and provides us a glimpse into the rich world of Sanders.

Sanders, who is celebrating the 10 year anniversary of his bookshop, has also achieved success as a publisher, his Dream Garden Press has published a Robert Crumb illustrated version of Edward Abbey's environmental classic Monkey Wrench Gang, and more recently has become an expert in the field of stolen books. His recent tenure as head of the Security division of the ABAA (Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America) was a watershed event for the organization. Sanders was directly responsible for tracking down and keeping tabs on numerous suspected book thieves and informing the organization of their whereabouts at any given time.

As much as he loves books Sanders loves the west. He says:

"I appreciate the civil war, I appreciate colonial America and history but it’s the West that really comes alive … maybe because it’s so relatively recent. The experience of what this land was like and this landscape and being able to go out today and wander in the West desert and still see the imprints of the wagons from the Donner/Reed party and other western immigrants, it really brings the history alive."

and Sanders has spent many years defending the places he loves. Whether it is through direct action, he was heavily involved in the early Earth First years and was friends with Edward Abbey and Dave Foreman, or through his publishing venture or through the material he stocks at the bookshop it is abundantly clear that Sanders has a deep sense of place and will do all he can to keep it alive.

He is a national treasure.




Photo by Chris Swainston

James Lackington: 18th Century Bookseller Extraordinaire

William Wallis (fl.1816-1855) after Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1793-1864), Temple of the Muses, Finsbury Square. London: Jones & Co., 1828. Etching and aquatint with added hand-coloring.

James Lackington was the most successful bookseller of the 18th century.
His legendary shop at Finsbury Square in London was named "The Temple of the Muses" and when the flag was raised on the huge dome outside it meant Lackington was inside and ready to do business.

Lackington revolutionized the book trade by becoming the first bookseller to refuse to sell books on credit. His cash only approach allowed him to offer books less expensively. Lackington also refused to destroy or discard remaindered books and instead sold them at bargain prices for Lackington firmly believed "that books were the key to knowledge, reason and happiness and that everyone, no matter their economic background, social class or gender, had the right to access books at cheap prices."

Though Lackington was more of businessman than a lover of books he was a generous man and was known to share the wealth with those less fortunate. He had the phrase "Small Profits Do Great Things" emblazoned on the doors of all his carriages.

Lackington wrote two books Memoirs of the Forty-Five First Years of the Life of James Lackington (1794) and The Confessions of James Lackington.


Bio of Lackington in James Parton's Captains Of Industry Or Men Of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money

Memoirs of the Forty-Five First Years of the Life of James Lackington at Google Book Search

Thanks to Julie Melby of Princeton University's Graphic Arts blog for the lead and the image

A Mess in Washington, D.C.

Granted, things are a bit of a mess in Washington but this is over the top.

Capitol Hill Books in Washington, D.C.

The owner, Jim Toole, admits the shop is “disorderly and confused,” luckily he has a good sense of humor.

Sign above the law book section:



Image 1 via DC Blogs
Image 2 via DC Traveller
Image 3 via DCist

Death of a Bookstore Trailer

Video trailers are becoming part of the standard marketing plan for many publishers but this is the first time I have seen one created for a bookshop that's closing its doors!

To promote their going out of business sale Loome Antiquarian Booksellers in Stillwater, Minnesota has created this trailer featuring vignettes of books acting "out their favorite literary death scenes."



The background music is a bit devilish and there is a little too much book violence for my taste but it is a pretty clever piece. Watching it a couple times I couldn't help but think that it seemed too happy, too misdirected for a piece announcing the closing of a bookshop.

Well, it all made sense - the music, the book violence, the seemingly upbeatness of it all-when I found out that there are two Loome bookshops in Stillwater, the other being Loome Theological Booksellers "the largest secondhand dealer of theological books in the world," which isn't going anywhere.


Thanks to Bibliophile Bullpen for the lead

A Rogue Bookshop Appears and the Books Are Free!

Free Books! was how the snippet on Shelf Awareness began.

The MailTribune of Southern Oregon ran a story on a new bookshop in Medford, Oregon "Ideals in Action. Book Exchange offers free books and runs on online sales."

The shop is called the Rogue Book Exchange and their tagline is:
Have a book, leave a book - want a book, take a book.

"It's a free, nonprofit bookstore and we pay the rent by online selling about one in 50 of the books that people give us." says Jenny Hamilton who owns the shop with here husband.

An intriguing model to say the least and given all that has gone on with the Jackson County Library system of late it I wanted to find out more about the shop and how it came about. It is interesting to hear how the county's library woes contributed to the birth of the shop and it will be really interesting to see how this model develops over time. There are seeds in here.

Here are excerpts from a interview with Jenny Hamilton

Book Patrol: How did you guys come up with the concept? Where there any similar models out there that influenced you?

Jenny Hamilton: Someone in nearby Ashland, Oregon actually started a very similar business just after the libraries closed and was selling it two months later. I went in to talk to him and was considering buying it but realized i wouldn't really be comfortable with the business model unless it was organized as a nonprofit (he was operating as a sole proprietorship), since it had such a small start-up cost i decided i'd just start something similar...as i was doing my online research i came across the web site for the book thing in baltimore (www.bookthing.org) and was heartened to see that the business model has been successful in other locations.

BP: Did the recent Jackson County library closure/fiasco play a part in formulating the concept?

JH: definitely. I have two young children and we generally had 30-40 children's library books out at a time on high rotation... the variety kept them entertained and me sane. :) when the libraries closed I felt like the barbarians were not only at the gates, they had breached the walls. Public libraries are one of the only government-run institutions that I feel like I can support with absolutely no qualms.

Our libraries are open again, but they outsourced their operation to a private company based in another state. so yes, they'll operate for lower expenses but all profits are now going out of state. There are fewer jobs and the ones that still exist don't pay as well as they did. in a lot of ways, this turned out to be a union busting maneuver, even if it wasn't planned that way. I'm glad to have the libraries back but i sure don't like they way it was done.

Hamilton concludes "it's such a feel-good business model... everyone coming in is enthusiastic and encouraging and generally hard to convince that "yes, the books really are free (but there's a cash donation box by the door if you'd like to make one)." i'm really having fun with it... i'm surprised more used book stores aren't doing it."

Marty Manley, the CEO of Alibris and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, is fond of saying "All analog media wants to become digital. All digital media wants to become free," he calls it Manley's Law. What Manley doesn't mention is that some parts of analog media might want to become free too.

A tremendous amount of inventory flooded the market when sites like Alibris and AbeBooks came on the scene. The influx has created unrelenting downward price pressure on most books with many being rendered worthless (from a commerce perspective). There are literally hundreds of thousands of books for sale at any given time for a penny on Amazon. This price point did not exist before online bookselling.

Are these the first rumblings of a workable model that would include a portion of your inventory being available for free?