Barnes & Noble Not Giving Up on Rare and Out-of- Print Books

When Barnes & Noble decided to close their Chelsea store in New York City many thought that the small rare- and out-of-print-book department that was housed at that location for the last 8 years would disappear too.

Instead the company decided to not only relocate the department to a larger store on Broadway and 66th Street but is also "spending a significant sum on the department, installing custom display cases with locked glass doors" and moving it to a more prominent location on the second floor of the store.

Although they are claiming that there are no plans to "replicate the effort in other stores" and are calling it the pet project of Karen Catalanotti, who set up the department in the Chelsea store, there exists a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on this growing market.

One can imagine in the not to distant future a Barnes & Noble Rare Book command center which would house seasoned booksellers and an extensive reference library and uses the latest technology to communicate with their various stores and booksellers on the front lines.

Picture this: Someone walks into a Barnes & Noble in Des Moines, Iowa with a box of books for sale. The trained used bookseller on staff deals with the general out of print material using a comprehensive internal database and if there is an item that might warrant further work they simply image or video it and send it off to the command center. A short time later the command center responds with either further bibliographic questions or a fair offer price.

For one, the profit margins are significantly higher than new books but more importantly it bolsters the role of the bookstore in the community and brings the company closer to being the full service bookstore they aspire to.

The future is near!

Celia McGee's piece, Rare Indeed: A Chain Committed to Selling Out-of-Print Books, in the New York Times

Bookseller Catalogues Part II

Having just issued my first two catalogues during the last year, Michael's weekend post on the resurgence of this bookselling tool was of particular interest. I completely agree that catalogues are making a comeback, perhaps especially among younger booksellers (an incredibly relative term in the antiquarian book biz - see Between the Covers' Tom Congleton for more on this). In addition to the previously-mentioned Derringer Books and Jeff Maser (and even, for that matter, Wessel and Lieberman), I would also throw out the examples of Garrett Scott (whose Some preliminary notes on the aesthetic merits of interesting catalogues is another great take on the matter), Royal Books, Harper's Books, and Lux Mentis as examples of younger(ish) booksellers issuing exciting catalogues. Jed Birmingham approached the question of catalogues from the point-of-view of a collector last year for his Bibliographic Bunker column on the William S. Burroughs website Reality Studio. And at the risk of quoting myself, around the same time I expanded on my own reasons for issuing a catalogue and what the future of catalogues might be:

For me, the decision to issue my first catalogue was one I made more than a year ago and was due to a number of factors. First and foremost, I had items that required a catalogue to sell them properly. The constraints of most databases mean that for important items needing long descriptions, necessary information would have to be left out or only suggested. Catalogues allow you to sell the book the way you want, with as many images as desired and with as much verbosity as you can muster.

Not only that, but put frankly - a dealer is not going to sell very expensive books on the internet. Few collectors or institutions are going to plunk down several thousand dollars on a book through ABE. A quick look at ABE’s monthly list of most expensive books sold bears this out; these prices are regularly eclipsed by book auction results and listings in dealer catalogues. A catalogue demonstrates a certain professionalism and proficiency that lend themselves to confidence on the buyer’s part. A catalogue also allows you to target your marketing, aiming your books at the customers and collections who would most be interested in your offerings. And finally, as a new and relatively young dealer, my hope was my first catalogue would act as a kind of calling card within the book world - a way to announce myself. So there were both practical and marketing reasons for my decision to issue my first catalogue.

That said, I recognize that the internet necessitates certain changes in catalogues, modifications that in my opinion need to be adopted if catalogues are to continue and if they are to be used successfully. In the current climate of easy price-comparison and simple access to many millions of books, a catalogue to succeed must meet two or more of the following criteria, and the more the better:

1) Scarce, rare, unique or unusual offerings.
2) Competitive, if not down right tempting, prices.
3) An interesting and informed perspective.
4) An appealing format and presentation.
5) A cohesive marketing identity - branding, if you will.

Before the ubiquity of the internet, a dealer - because of asymmetrical information - could often get by with perhaps a well-designed catalogue, or a well-written one. Now, however, either #1 or #2 are musts (and preferably both) and they need to be coupled with at least one of the remaining conditions. Why? Because for catalogues to succeed they must offer something the internet does not.

Finally, I should also mention new bookseller Chris Lowenstein of Book Hunters Holiday, who has been documenting her own experiences readying her Dante catalogue on her blog. Having read a draft of the catalogue, I can say with certainty Chris will make a fine addition to the list of booksellers using this still-vital tool.

The Return of the Bookseller Catalog

Derringer Books. Catalog 17. Designed by Andrea Latham

Publishers might be considering giving up on the printed catalogs but bookseller catalogs are making a comeback. Since the early days of bookselling the catalog was the cornerstone of a bookseller's business. It was the premier sales channel for the trade. They became; however, an early casualty of online bookselling. Many booksellers completely abandoned the catalog format while focusing on developing an online presence. Most of us thought they were no longer necessary. Now, a little over a decade later, most have returned to the catalog.

Jeff Maser. Catalog 46. Designed by Andrea Latham

Why? A lot has to do with online saturation. Outside of one's own website it has become very difficult to separate oneself from the hoards of people who have joined the online bookselling ranks. There are just too many books online and most are being listed by people with little or no experience in traditional bookselling. The quality is being swallowed up by the quantity. The saddest part is that it has become virtually impossible for the end user, the potential customer, to make sense of what they are seeing online. Buying books online has become a crap shoot.

Serendipity Books. Catalog for the New York Antiquarian Book Fair 2004. Designed by Andrea Latham

So, it is back to the catalog and while we were away the technology, printing and production options have improved greatly allowing us to infuse new life to this old bookselling staple. As the images in this post show, high quality graphic design has also entered the fray.

Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers. Catalog 39. Designed by John Hubbard

While I was preparing this post we received the latest catalog from Rulon-Miller Books. Rulon-Miller's cover rant perfectly conveys the frustrations and new challenges the traditional bookseller faces. Click on it to enlarge and enjoy!

Zoomii : A Virtual, Virtual "Bookstore"

When Amazon.com burst on to the scene as the world's first virtual bookstore who knew that it would eventually turn an entire industry upside down. Overnight, practically every book in print was made available at discounted prices to anyone with computer access. It wasn't long before the traditional independent new bookstore began to die.

Now comes Zoomii "an online version of a real bookstore with Amazon's low prices, secure payment and fast shipping." Zoomii takes Amazon's entire catalog and turns it into a visual browsing trip. Essentially an Amazon affiliate, with all order processing done by Amazon, that utilizes Amazon's powerful Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3) Zoomii is banking on the armies of readers and book buyers who do judge a book by its cover.

While it feels a little gimmicky, and their claim of being "an online version of a real bookstore" is a bit of an oxymoron, I can see potential crossover application to the antiquarian market. I can imagine a bookseller using the technology to create a visual online representation of a catalog or to highlight particular sections of their shop.

Here is a two minute video of how it works:




Thanks to ReadWriteWeb for the lead

An Interview With AbeBooks CEO, Dr. Hannes Blum

AbeBooks.com is one of the world's leading marketplaces for new, used, rare, and out of print books with over 13,000 vendors offering over 110 million books. I recently had a chance to interview their CEO, Dr. Hannes Blum. An edited version of the interview will appear in the July issue of Amphora.

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Book Patrol - Firstly, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule, it is appreciated.

AbeBooks recently announced its acquisition of Chrislands, a website provider for online booksellers. This comes on the heels of AbeBooks previous acquisitions of Fillz and BookFinder.

The earlier acquisitions of Fillz and BookFinder seemed to complement Abebooks in some way, at least on the periphery, whether it is the fulfillment and date routing that Fillz provides to booksellers or the book search functionality offered by the meta searching of BookFinder but Chrislands on the other hand seems to be in direct competition to the AbeBooks model as book aggregator.

It would seem that one of the greatest threats facing AbeBooks would be in the booksellers building of their own websites. Coupled with Google's dominance in the search arena and Amazon's far reach and you potentially have a situation where the user will eventually bypass the traditional 3rd party books sites like AbeBooks, Alibris and Biblio.

What is the overall acquisition strategy for AbeBooks and how do these recent acquisitions fit?

Hannes Blum – A couple of points here.... We expand AbeBooks in two ways – organically such as by setting up new sites like the recently-launched www.abebooks.it and by purchasing companies. When we decide to purchase a company, we look for firms that are successful, have potential to grow and are all about books.

Booksellers realize that they have to offer books for sale through as many different ‘channels’ as possible. Before the internet, that meant auctions, book fairs and catalogs as well as bricks and mortar bookstores. Today, the same rule applies and we accept that sellers are going to sell through other online marketplaces and also develop their own retail websites. We understand this and accept this. This is a part of the online bookselling world that we want to be involved with – Chrislands already does a great job and has fantastic potential. We’re not straying away from online bookselling but simply making sure we have a strong presence in another developing area of internet bookselling. We are prepared to diversify but we stay loyal to books. Chrislands complements AbeBooks very nicely – just like Fillz and BookFinder.com do. Each business gives us some influence in another part of online bookselling.

BP -Does the acquisition of Chrislands signify a change of course for AbeBooks?

HB – No. The Chrislands acquisition can be compared to our purchase of BookFinder.com in 2005. Both BookFinder.com and Chrislands have different business models to AbeBooks but they’re still essentially all about online bookselling.

BP - In addition to these acquisitions AbeBooks also has a minority stake in the leading book social networking site, LibraryThing.

-Are there any future plans to incorporate more of LibraryThing’s functionality with AbeBooks?

HB – Not at the moment but we could do more with LibraryThing in the future. We already have the BookHints recommendation system which is based upon the libraries of LibraryThing.com members. At a very basic level, we are constantly learning from Tim Spalding at LibraryThing. Tim’s site leads the way in social networking for book people.

BP - AbeBooks recently announced some changes to their pricing structure by extending the 8% commission on books sold to include shipping charges. These changes, much like the decision a couple of years to partner with Chase and bring the credit card processing in house, has met with much resistance in the bookselling community.

The credit card processing initiative left many booksellers up in arms and resulted in a one week boycott of AbeBooks by members of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association (ABAA). At the time, most booksellers were paying 3.5% or less for their credit card processing fee and where now told that AbeBooks will be taking care of all the credit card transactions and charging them a whopping 5.5% fee for the transaction.

-Why didn’t Abebooks simply raise the commission rate from 8 to 13%, inline with other online book aggregators, and leave the credit card processing fees out of it?

HB – You are referring to a change made in 2006. At the time, the ‘boycott’ was limited to a small number of sellers and had no impact on our business. In April 2006, AbeBooks began processing Visa and MasterCard transactions on behalf of its booksellers.
This decision was taken for several reasons. Mainly, we wanted to take control of credit card processing in order to better tackle online fraud. This was the first step in an on-going process. Today, we have to undertake stricter than ever measures against online fraud because of PCI (Payment Card Industry) requirements and the sheer volume of transactions that go through our sites. Since making those changes in 2006, we have invested millions in new PCI-compliant hardware and a new state-of-the-art data storage facility in Calgary, Alberta. The revenues from credit card processing fees are being used to good effect to protect buyers and sellers, and to ensure AbeBooks remains secure and robust.

BP - The recent announcement of extending the 8% commission on sales to include the shipping charge has met with equal opposition. The Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA) issued an open letter addressed to you citing their concerns that this new fee structure will unduly affect their international member booksellers who frequently ship books to the United States . On the other hand, and more importantly, the new fee structure also seems aimed at the mega-sellers or penny sellers who are selling books that are less expensive than the actual shipping charges and who are using the shipping charges as a profit center.

-Why not apply the new fee structure only to those sellers? There are an infinite variety of booksellers on AbeBooks and to place a blanket pricing structure on all of Abebooks vendors seems to stir up controversy at every turn.

HB – We decided to apply commission to shipping charges for two reasons. Firstly, we wanted to increase our revenue because we are being affected by higher operating costs. Increasing costs of hardware and in online marketing, and also the strength of the Canadian dollar combined with the weakness of the American dollar have all had an impact.

Secondly, our customers are unhappy when they find an apparently cheap book but then discover it has a very high shipping fee. This practice is not confined to any single type of seller but a number of booksellers across the board. We want to encourage sellers to lower their shipping fees because high shipping fees are unpopular with buyers.

I think we remain a very competitive online marketplace for books. Importantly, we offer flexibility in that sellers can set their own shipping fees, we offer a very high level of customer support to our booksellers, including 1 800 telephone support, and – very importantly – we offer access to international customers because we have a single database serving six different sites for North America, the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spanish speakers.

Whenever we make a change at AbeBooks there is a reaction from our booksellers. A small number are very vocal. We have been very clear about why these recent changes have been made and answered countless questions from booksellers. We have staged online roundtables and met sellers in person during April at the London Book Fair and at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair.

BP - For most booksellers that I know, and many are the ones that have been selling on AbeBooks the longest, AbeBooks has become a declining revenue stream in the last few years. Most are seeing double digit declines in sales on AbeBooks with some booksellers claiming sales down as much as 60%.

-What do you attribute this across the board decline in sales to? Increased competition? Saturation in the marketplace?

HB – Sales across AbeBooks’ network of sites as a whole are actually increasing and we outperform most of our direct competition based on our knowledge – we facilitate sales of up to 30,000 books each day, sometimes more at the height of the college textbook seasons in August and January. On all online marketplaces, competition between sellers has increased – selling books online has become an extremely popular occupation. Anyone who sold books on AbeBooks before 2000 was part of a small number of booksellers and those same booksellers now face stiffer competition. There is also increased competition between the marketplaces themselves – the marketplaces compete for traffic and then the sellers on the marketplaces compete for the sales. Remember business changes much faster on the internet than in traditional commercial environments.

Nowadays, sellers list far more books for sale than they used to, so we try to encourage sellers to improve sales by offering better and more in-depth book descriptions, and give each listing an image, and also by closely monitoring their pricing and making adjustments when necessary. We attempt to give sellers as much guidance as possible so they are equipped to attract buyers.

BP - What steps is AbeBooks taking to try and increase sales through AbeBooks.com? The model of trying to increase revenue through increased fees for your vendors, as opposed to increasing revenue through the front-end and attracting more customers seems unsustainable.

HB – Our model is very sustainable because we keep it carefully balanced and we continue to see decent growth in buyers. As I said before, business evolves very fast on the Internet and online companies fail exceptionally quickly when business turns bad, so we wouldn’t be around if our business model wasn’t sustainable.

We make huge efforts to attract buyers through online marketing and more traditional marketing practices. Our marketing budget doesn’t compare to the money spent by the likes of Amazon but we make every dollar work for us. We drive traffic to the sites through extensive search engine marketing, thousands of affiliate websites, a regular stream of highly targeted e-newsletters, meeting buyers at book fairs, sponsorship and public relations.

Let’s take April as an example. In April, we launched a new website dedicated to Italy – that’s a huge undertaking and we’ve just opened up a new market for our sellers. It immediately had an impact and our most expensive sale in April was facilitated through AbeBooks.it when an Italian buyer purchased an Edward Lear letter for $11,491. We attended the LA Times Festival of Books where we had two booths and five members of staff who met thousands of bookloving people and told them in person about AbeBooks. We sent out around 18 different e-newsletters from our North American office and more went out to European buyers from our office in Germany. On our websites, there were author interviews, contests, and original content – all designed to draw buyers in and hold them on the site.

Clearly, we are doing something right because Which? – a consumer protection organization similar to Consumer Reports in the US – shortlisted AbeBooks.co.uk as one of the three best internet retailers in the UK. Just two months ago, the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper listed AbeBooks as one of the 101 most important websites in the United Kingdom. Having said that, we appreciate that there is much more work to be done.

Aside from our marketing efforts, we are also continuing to improve our own websites so that once a buyer arrives at AbeBooks they have a good buying experience and come back for more books. I can’t stress enough how important this behind-the-scenes work is. We want a first-time buyer to become a regular customer so they will buy from AbeBooks for life.

BP - The antiquarian, rare and out-of-print bookseller has been a seminal part of Abebooks vendor base since its inception. You will be giving the keynote speech at the upcoming Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar in Colorado Springs .

-I was wondering if you be so kind to allow us a glimpse of what you plan to talk about that evening.

HB – I’ll be talking about several industry trends, including how we intend improve the visibility of used and rare book listings on our sites.

BP - It is amazing how much bookselling has changed in the last 10+ years since the advent of Abebooks and online bookselling. Abebooks has always been at the forefront of this brave new world, One of the company's tag lines is "AbeBooks is changing how books are found, sold, and shared with the world."

-What kind of changes in the ways 'books are found, sold and online and shared with the world' do you foresee in next 5 to 10 years?

HB – Firstly, books are not going away. The book remains the greatest technology of all time – they are portable, they are easy to use, they are durable, they convey a huge amount of information. But most importantly, books are loved and treasured, and inspire readers. We watch with great interest what is happening with the Kindle and other e-reading devices but these things are a long way from making a significant impact on the book world.

Looking ahead five to 10 years is very difficult. AbeBooks is 12 years old and look how we have developed. The founders were amazed when the site’s inventory reached one million books and then they swore that three million would be the absolute limit. Now we have more than 110 million books for sale and sellers continue to load up more books.

We expect new online bookselling markets to develop around the world – Eastern Europe, South America, Asia, India. We saw this coming a long time ago and have been ‘internationalizing’ AbeBooks’ business since 2002 so that we were not totally dependent on our core market in North America.

Perhaps the most accurate thing I can say is that things will continue to happen fast on the Internet. Bricks and mortar businesses can take decades to develop but online firms can make an impact in a very short time. Look at Google.

Last year, we conducted an extensive bookseller poll and they told us they intend to keep loading up books to increase their online inventory, so the choice for buyers is going to become even wider.

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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)

Books at Home

"Modern Home" color lithograph, 1879 from The Complete Home: An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Life and Affairs

In her 1879 book The Complete Home: An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Life and Affairs Julia McNair Wright had this to say about having books in the home:

It has long been my opinion that one of the chief ways of making a home happy, thriving and useful in its influence, is to supply it well with books and papers. Having carefully observed and contrasted homes well furnished with reading matter, and homes where literature is unknown, I find that intelligence, family affection, thrift, economy, business habits and joyous home-loving mark the homes with books; and bickering, wastefulness, general ignorance and idle pleasure-seeking, characterize the others

She goes on "A Home without books is like a garden without flowers, a forest without birds or sunshine, like a house without furniture. Out of bookless homes go the majority of the criminals, paupers, vagrants, maniacs and chronic invalids"

I wonder what Ms. Wright would make of Leni Leth and her website Book Decor, a site that specializes in books as decoration. At Book Decor it's the outside that counts; you can fill your home with books without the slightest regard for what is in them.

Other booksellers, most notably the Strand, have had success with the book by the foot or yard approach but most often it is part of their larger business model. Leth just might be the first exclusive "ornamental book merchant" or "decorative book dealer."

Here are a couple of nuggets from Book Decor:

"Our books are so beautiful on the outside that their interior ceases to be important."

"Here at Book Décor, we specifically carry antique books printed in Danish. While they might not be suitable for cozy fireside reading, they will definitely enhance the comfortable space!"

"Another reason why books are great for home décor is that they never wear-out. Unlike fabrics or expensive rugs whose luster seems to fade with age, books never loose their appeal," but of course you can add books from the Zen Collection at $25 a pop where "due to prolonged exposure to light, have developed a very delicate and soft look. They are truly unusual looking and will add calmness to any decor."

Will this new breed of a book filled home be wraught with the "bickering, wastefulness, general ignorance and idle pleasure-seeking" found in the homes without books or will it add another domestic dimension that has yet to be explored?

IndieBound or Bust

That's the title of Jim Milliot's piece for Publisher's Weekly on the unveiling of the American Booksellers Association (ABA) new marketing “movement/revolution” initiative, IndieBound.

The good news is that it replaces Book Sense which has failed miserably in helping independents remain competitive in the fast changing world of bookselling. The bad news is that IndieBound won't fare much better.

What is IndieBound? Here is their Declaration:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for individuals to denounce the corporate bands which threaten to homogenize our cities and our souls, we must celebrate the powers that make us unique and declare the causes which compel us to remain independent.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all stores are not created equal, that some are endowed by their owners, their staff and their communities with certain incomparable heights, that among these are Personality, Purpose and Passion. The history of the present indies is a history of experiences and excitement, which we will continue to establish as we set our sights on a more unconstrained state. To prove this, let's bring each other along and submit our own experiences to an unchained world.

We, therefore, the Kindred Spirits of IndieBound, in the name of our convictions, do publish and declare that these united minds are, and darn well ought to be, Free Thinkers and Independent Souls. That we are linked by the passions that differentiate us. That we seek out soul makes to share our excitement. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the strength of our identities, we respectively and mutually pledge to lead the way as we all declare that we are IndieBound!

Their kidding, right? How is this going to help their members sell books? In the last 20 years independent bookstores have gone from selling 100% of the books sold in this country to less than 10% today! And for most of those 20 years the cries of 'support your local independent bookstore' has been heard loud and clear in communities throughout this country. New t-shirts are not going to make a difference.

Simply providing cheerleading merchandise and tools won't solve the fundamental problem.

What is needed is a comprehensive e-commerce solution that provides independent booksellers an opportunity to compete with the big boys. What is needed is a portal, call it IndieBound if you wish, that offers the same book-related merchandise, content and convenience that Amazon does. A place where one can order any book in print and have it at their door in a reasonable amount of time. You don't need to be price competitive you need to be technologically competitive. People will pay more if they know that their purchase is helping their local independent bookstore. Don't ask them to put their zip code in when they hit the home page- let them shop- and when they put their zip code in at checkout up pops a list of the independent stores in their area. Let them decide which store will receive a portion of the sale, then keep a portion for website maintenance and marketing.

If the distributors don't want to play and adjust their shipping model to provide direct to consumer shipping than do it yourself. Use some of the $39 million that you have in reserve and invest in a distribution center for your members.

There are plenty of people out there who would support an alternative to Amazon and Barnes & Noble but a viable online alternative has yet to be created.

“I want to be enthused about IndieBound. I don’t think it is much more than Book Sense renamed. I kind of felt like a teenager who only got to second base last night.” said Maryelizabeth Hart, co-owner of Mysterious Galaxy Books in San Diego, after witnessing the unveiling of the new initiative.

Unfortunately, they are still on first base.

They same issue persists in the non-new book world as well. The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) has also failed to provide its members with a viable alternative to the used book aggregators like AbeBooks.com, Alibris and Amazon.

I wish I knew what everyone is waiting for.

Violence Against Books : Is There an Acceptable Form?

"Violence against books is understood by all parties involved as being comparable to violence against people and/or ideas and that violence against a book can quickly lead to other forms of conflict." Cordell Waldron, Iconic Books blog.

But what if the violence is not motivated by politics or religion but by commerce?

Earlier this month word got out that a U.S. soldier used a Quran for target practice.

Here's the video of the AP story and the apology by Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad. To think that this was an isolated incident would be a bit of a stretch.





In Israel police are looking into the burning of hundreds of copies of the New Testament. Uzi Aharon, the deputy mayor of Or-Yehuda, a town outside Tel Aviv, is being investigated for organizing a group of students who set fire to several hundred copies of the New Testament.

Apparently the bibles were distributed by a messanic Jewish group who in the words of Ahron "encouraged one to go against Judaism." When Ahron got word he "drove around the neighborhood with a loudspeaker asking residents to gather all the New Testaments that were given to them. The yeshiva boys then went from apartment to apartment and picked up the books." Then they burned them. The deputy mayor has since apologized but the damage has been done.

This is a far cry of the recent book burnings undertaken by booksellers to do away with unwanted and unsaleable inventory. Here there is no political or religious motive but the act of book burning is laden with so much historical baggage, this is after all the month of the 75th anniversary of the Nazi Book burnings, that any application is destined to stir up controversy.

Abebooks recently interviewed Shaun Bythell of the The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland who in 2005 staged a book burning during a festival in Wigtown. Bythell gives us two reasons for the torching. The first is purely a marketing one "I wanted to help promote Wigtown as Scotland's National Book Town, and with no advertising budget I had to think of some way of getting media coverage without paying for it." says Bythell.

The second and the one that in a sense legitimizes the act as a form of inventory reduction is "to highlight the fate of books which have reached the end of their useful life." Bythell burned upwards of 3,000 books, each selected "based entirely on commercial value, so most of them were in damaged or unreadable condition, or just so out of fashion and with so little value if they ever became fashionable again that they were not worth holding on to." Sounds like it might be a better option than sending 3,000 books to the landfill.



How did Bythell feel about the burning:

“I didn't feel any remorse about burning the books, as a dealer you have no choice when it comes to dead stock. If you don't keep it moving you'll end up with a shop full of books nobody wants to buy. To be honest I felt a sense of relief as it went up in smoke, both because it burned OK and because it was out of my stock room and no longer causing congestion."

and for those from the "knee-jerk ‘book burning is a bad thing’ brigade" who immediately liken the activity to the Nazi book burnings Bythell offers this: "Although there are historical associations, there is no causal link between burning books and oppression, and to assume that everyone who burns books is an oppressor is a sign of an underdeveloped mind."

In the publicity material for the burning Bythell reminds us of this quote from Rabbi Akiba Ben Joseph, ‘The paper burns, but the words fly away.’”

A Holistic Approach

On Reading Ahead, the blog of the National Book Foundation, Executive Director Harold Augenbraun offers us this nugget regarding the state of reading in this country.

If literary reading is on the decline, one way to stem that decline is to create a holistic approach along a spectrum of age-appropriate activities and to allow flexibility, which the balkanized literary culture will most likely not be able to do because of varied cultural, political, and social ideologies that have very little to do with inculcating a love of reading. If we leave the creation of readers to ideologues—and I use that word in its broadest sense—as we have done for decades, we will end up as a nation of non-readers. And I am not only talking about the easy-to-predict failure of Reading First and No Child Left Behind, but the results of the actions of boards of education, curriculum developers, parents, and even book salespeople.

The same need for a holistic approach applies to the bookselling world. Here are some excerpts from Bookselling 2.0 : The Bookseller Manifesto. Part II that appeared on Book Patrol back in January of 2007:

Step 3

The barriers that separate the different forms of bookselling must be torn down. A bookseller must be willing to sell new, used, rare and out-of-print books. They must be willing to sell books by small presses, fine presses and book artists. Hand-made and machine-made, limited and unlimited editions.

One must embrace the rich world of the book, in all its forms, to succeed. Each bookshop becomes a book center where all the book needs of the community can be met.

Yes, you can put a used copy of a book next to a new copy, next to the DVD of the filmed version, and you can have the first edition and a fine press edition available too!

Step 5

The bookselling industry remains completely fragmented, both within the various segments (new, resale, book arts, etc.) of the industry and within the industry as a whole.

To date the leadership of the ABA (American Booksellers Association) and the ABAA (Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America) have been unable to respond effectively to the massive changes that has taken place in the industry. Yes, there have been changes and no doubt much effort and thought has been expended by the leadership but the trade remains in dire straights.

At minimum, the leadership of these trade organizations must unite their resources and begin a concerted effort to work together. They should also reach out to the various Book Arts Guilds and Centers for the Book throughout the country. We need to build book epicenters in our communities not independent outposts. We do not want to, or need to, be survivors.

In Defence of Amazon : Their New POD Strategy as Opportunity.

Much has been written about Amazon's new strategy of offering print on demand titles sold on their website exclusively through their POD company, Book Surge. Cries of monopoly and unfair business practices have permeated the discourse but there are I believe, potential opportunities for publishers and authors within this new paradigm.

Just as the arrival of Amazon changed the bookselling landscape forever their new POD strategy is sure to alter the publishing landscape in similar ways and how the publishers respond will ultimately determine their chance of survival. Will we lose as many publishers as we have book stores?

I see nothing wrong with Amazon's surge into POD. They are, after all, a business and are obligated to develop the most cost effective ways to succeed. By printing needed titles on demand to include or "marry" with other items will save them zillions of dollars in shipping charges and in shipping supplies. Just think of how many fewer boxes they will need or packing tape, or related labor expenses in being able to cut down on the amount of shipments without a decline in the number of items sold.

So where is the opportunity?

Publishers and authors can still produce books that will differ from the Amazon edition and be desired in the marketplace. The Amazon POD editions will be the mass market paperbacks of the new publishing era. There will remain a healthy market for other editions. The publishers can capitalize on this by offering their own editions that might include extra material much like the movie studios do with their DVD releases. An extra short story, an extra poem, interviews with the author, signed copies, manuscript pages etc.; the possibilities are endless. Not everyone wants their book the next day nor do they want a cheaply produced version. Quality still counts and many will still pay for it.

This is not a wake up call as some of said this is more of a last call. The rules of bookselling and publishing have changed drastically and the publishers that can respond in new innovative ways will be the ones that prosper.

Previous Book Patrol posts on the Amazon sales tax issue:

ABA Misguided In Their Support For An Internet Sales Tax

New York Booksellers Ask Spitzer to Reconsider Online Sales Tax

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?

A Little Bookselling Wisdom From Larry McMurtry

"The problem with large bookstores is that they contain usually a lot of junk. My focus as a bookseller is to keep the junk out. Because good books don’t pull bad books up, bad books pull good books down."

-From a brief interview with McMurtry by Julie Riggot for the Los Angeles Downtown News.

McMurtry will receive the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award later this week.

LA City Librarian Fontayne Holmes says of McMurtry "He really is such a book person in every single meaning of the word, as a bookstore owner, as a book collector, as a writer and as an incredible reader of literature"

Ironically enough, McMurtry will receive the honor on the same day that the venerable LA bookstore Dutton's closes its doors for good.

Technology, technology, technology

Here's a piece I wrote that appears in the latest issue of Amphora the journal of the Alcuin Society. It was written back in early January and though things continue to change at a rapid pace in the book world I thought it still worth sharing.

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Technology, technology, technology

If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
-Bob Dylan

Technology, technology, technology has not exactly been the battle cry of the bookselling trade over the years but technology has now become an inescapable influence. The seismic changes bought about by the arrival of online bookselling in the mid-to-late 1990’s might have just been an appetizer. In the last year alone we have seen numerous technologies introduced each with potential far reaching effects for the bookseller. Three that stand out are the LongPen, new breakthroughs in digitization and Print on Demand technologies and the Book Social Networking craze.

The LongPen is a technology that allows authors to sign books from the comfort of their own homes. It is billed as "the world's first real time, pen and ink long-distance autographing device" which produces "legally valid" signatures. It includes an audio and video component which recreates the particulars of a reading without the presence of the author. The two most interesting uses so far were what I believe was Norman Mailer’s last “book signing” when he went LongPen for the Edinburgh International Literary festival and convicted felon and book collector Conrad Black’s recent LongPen session. As far as I can tell no copies of books signed via LongPen have hit the market yet but it is sure to create a stir as the market determines the value of these “signed” books.

Print on demand has been around few a few years but this past year the Espresso Book Vending Machine hit the scene. The machine has the ability to produce two 500 page books every 7 minutes. The books are glued in full laminated covers and can be printed in any language. Though presently prohibitively expensive for most booksellers the seeds are here for a future version that will be affordable. Conceivably every out of print and hard to find book will be available to be printed on demand. This will not end the need for the original book version but it will greatly diminish the pool of potential customers for that book in its original form. Then there is the issue of digitization. Google will eventually run out of libraries to court and with their insatiable need for content will be forced to look elsewhere for material. Outside of libraries booksellers are one of the few repositories for untapped information. There is an enormous amount of unique content stored within the confines of the bookselling trade. From books long out of print to ephemeral items that present core samples of our material culture, there is a treasure trove of content awaiting the light of digitization. The door might not be open for long but if entered correctly it might become a new source of revenue for the bookseller.

Then we have the new world of social networking for book lovers. The three major players in this field are Librarything, Shelfari and Goodreads. Each brings readers and book people the opportunity to visualize their library and meet up with others with like interests. Though the act of reading is a solitary activity and doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the socializing and networking elements of this technology there still remains tremendous potential here. For example the library of Thomas Jefferson has recently been added to LibraryThing and one can imagine all the great collections both public and private that can benefit from being exposed to this new format.

In a trade that remained pretty much stable for hundreds of years we are now faced with change as the constant and how the bookseller adapts to this new playing field and these new technologies will ultimately determine their success.

Better World Books : Are They Better for the Book World?

Last week it was announced that Better World Books has raised $4.5 million including a $2.5 commitment from the Social Enterprise Expansion Fund of Good Capital.

I have been following this company for a while and on the face of things they are doing many positive things and are deserving but there is something unsettling about this company. As much as I desire to support a socially responsible company involved with books something about Better World Books just doesn't sit right with me. They seem to be lacking a sense of humility and transparency that I would think would need to be paramount for such an endeavor.

I understand the challenges of uniting commerce and philanthropy but we are ultimately talking about a for-profit enterprise and as far as I can tell they have not released any information as to what the percentage of profits donated to non-profit partners is nor have they released any financial figures or salary figures of employees and executives (though according to Wikipedia NPR reported that its top executives make $100,000 or more).

"We have become an expert in finding new homes for old books" says co-founder F. Xavier Helgesen. If that is indeed the case how is that the have 1.8 million used books and 500,000 new titles in stock? I frequently look at the thousands of books in our inventory and think mistake rather than expert in finding new homes.

They claim to employ "two full-time, in-house Antique, Rare & Collectible book experts to grade & care for rare books." I am assuming that these are the same two people that attended last summer's rare book school at Colorado Springs representing Better World Books. If that is true they are far from expert and to promote them as such is a bit misleading. I have been selling books for over 15 years and the last thing I would call myself would be an expert. Experienced maybe, expert never.

Here are a couple of descriptions for their books as seen on AbeBooks.com

Joan Crawford. My Way of Life
Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers! Your purchase benefits world literacy! First Ed. $116.25

Dawson The War That Was Never Fought- Used - Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers! Your purchase benefits world literacy!. $1

-there is also another listing for the same book with the same description for $3.64.

A $100 book and $1 book are given the same treatment, each with the same lack of precision. Using terms like "perhaps considerable marking on inside" and "may have some markings on the inside" does nothing to help the customer know what they are in for should they choose to purchase the book and the marketing jargon ("100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers! Your purchase benefits world literacy!") carries more weight for them than the actual specifics of the book.

For a company that exists to promote literacy in the world it is disheartening that they lack basic, fundamental bookselling literacy.

They might be trying to make the world a better place but I am not so sure they are helping the book world become a better place.

Vendor Satisfaction and Online Bookselling

Last week Which?, a Consumer Reports type organization in the United Kingdom, released the results of a survey focusing on customer satisfaction as it relates to online shopping for entertainment products.

Abebooks UK lead the field with a rating of "89% for overall satisfaction and were praised for how easy it was to find products on their site." The sample size for AbeBooks was pretty slight at 89 respondents where Amazon UK had 2812 and, the other company that shared the top spot with AbeBooks, Play.com had 416 respondents. Categories included Price, Availability, Delivery and Returns.

I would love to see someone undertake a similar survey of the vendors that make up the core of the offerings for the major book aggregators like Alibris, Amazon, AbeBooks, Biblio and even the websites of the professional organizations like the ABAA and the ABA.

For the most part, the publicity and focus of the book aggregators is on the end user with very little attention paid to the vendors who supply the inventory that make these sites run.

How happy are the vendors?
How satisfied are they with the way things are going?
This dream survey would be broken down by type of bookseller so that one can see who is really being better served by the current mix of online third-party bookselling.

Categories could include:
Booksellers that are members of a professional organization.
People that sell books only online.
Megalisters - vendors that have available for sale more books than they own.

It would also be interesting to survey independent bookstores that sell new books to see how satisfied they are with the current state of the publishing industry. All have been side-swiped by the new pricing models that exploded on the scene with the rise of Amazon and Costco, are they satisfied with how the publishing industry responded to their needs?

There is a collective power among independent bookstores and booksellers that has yet to be effectively harnessed and unleashed. For now, many of us are taking what we can get from these various venues waiting for the day when we find our ultimate online home.


Which? article on the results

Forget Face-Out Borders Is Just About Face-Down

Following close on the heels of their recent shady pronouncement that they will be carrying less inventory and altering their display strategy to display more books face-out Borders announced today that they are hiring two Wall Street heavyweights to "explore strategic alternatives, including a sale of all or part of the company". They have also accepted a cash helping from the hedge fund Pershing Capital Advisors (at 12% interest).

PersonaNonData has a look at the numbers.

The Millions has the face-out issued covered here and here and offers the soundest advice for finding that "strategic alternative." By acknowledging that books are a 'knowledge product' and not a 'commodity product' then and only then can the right approach to successful bookselling be created. As Max says "it's crazy to try to sell books as a commodity product because, (and this is just a guess) out of all the retail categories out there, bookstores by far offer the widest array of products, and therefore would require the most guidance and the best systems to help customers find what they are looking for."

Books have special needs and until the chain retailers attend to these special needs they will continue to falter.

Borders Press Release.

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.

A Home for Booksellers

Booksellers Provident Retreat at Abbots Langley, Herts, 1848

"The Booksellers Provident Retreat, Abbott's Langley, Herts, established 1843, is an asylum connected with the Booksellers' Provident Institution, for aged booksellers and booksellers' assistants, and their widows, who are in receipt of annuities from the Booksellers' Provident Institution. Income under £100 per annum." from The Charities of London, by Samuel Low, Jun., London: Sampson Low, Son, & Co. 1861.

Believe it or not these guys are still around. It is now run by the "BTBS the book trade charity" and "The benevolence, care and generosity of the members of the Booksellers Provident Institution who founded The Retreat lives on...The Retreat is unique in that it is the only estate dedicated to providing homes for people who have worked in book publishing, distribution or sales, where they can live safe in the knowledge that they have a home for as long as they need it, within a community of like-minded people who share a common interest."

How long is the waiting list? The way things are going in the bookselling world maybe it's time to open one of these in our country.

Beautiful Children for Free

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Update 3/4: According to Random House during the 72 hours that the book was available to download for free they received:
- just under 30,000 pageviews,
-20,000 unique visitors
-just under 15,000 copies of the book were downloaded.

Download results from Amazon and the other publishing partners who participated are not yet available.
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Just days after throwing open their digital doors and committing to DRM-free audiobooks Random House has announced that they will be opening the digital door for printed books as well. The newly released and heavily hyped debut novel by Charles Bock, "Beautiful Children," will be available for free via a PDF download.

The catch is you got 2 days to do it. The book will be available for free through midnight Friday. Though the limited download window makes it feel more like a publicity stunt than a commitment Random House should still be given tons of credit for taking the leap. This is not some backlist title or fading frontlist title that they are experimenting with, this is one of their hottest books, and a recent addition to the New York Times bestseller list.

Random House has been testing and tracking DRM free audio downloads since last fall at eMusic.com and "have not yet found a single instance of the eMusic watermarked titles being distribute