When a critic said of Nicole C. Vosseler's, “Unter dem Safranmond” (Under the Saffron Moon) that it was an "entertaining love story that especially appeals to female readers moving them to tears," the marketing bells went off at the German publisher Lubbe.The publisher hired the Munich marketing firm ServicePlan who created a tissue box that mirrors the hardback. Same cloth, same visuals. The publisher produced 5,000 tissue books to offer with the novel. And, if you need more, the tissues are pre-printed with quotes from the book!The concept has earned two major design awards including the bronze lion at the...
Books by the Foot
Wonder Books, an ABAABooks by the Foot This method of bookselling is still evolving. While much of the current energy is focused on the visual It has become much more difficult to sell many books individually.This is not new. They've been selling books by the foot for years at the strandStudent Edition - packagereader's editioncollector edition - all the works of your favorite author in the first edition.
Oakland’s New Secondhand Tax: The Used Bookshop Now a Pawnshop
The city of Oakland has implemented a new tax on sellers of used goods that, in effect, now places the used bookshop in the same realm as the pawn shop.The tax, which is based on the state's Secondhand Dealers' law; a 50-year-old law written to help police locate stolen goods, will cost bookshops at least $600 a year and force them to fingerprint employees and "keep meticulous, detailed notes of every item they buy and sell, including the private personal information of the persons involved in each transaction."Failure to comply with the law is considered a misdemeanor and carries a...
Amazon Tightening Its Grip on the Book World
Last month, in his post "The End of Indie," Richard Nash proclaimed: "Indie doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s dead. Which is OK, because it won...So now the phase of indie is over, now that the monopoly on the production and distribution of knowledge, culture and opinion has been broken, what next, a new phase..."A week later Amazon released their updated terms of service which essentially, forces the hand of the many websites and companies that use their API to provide data to their users. The gist of the new terms is that if you use Amazon's data, then you must...
Osama Bin Laden’s Book Club: 3 Must Reads for America
The latest purported communique from Osama Bin Laden,“An Address to the American People,” includes mention of 3 books that Bin Laden feels will help us Americans better understand his plight.The three titles are:The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by Stephen M. WaltPalestine: Peace Not Apartheid by former President Jimmy CarterThe Apology of a Hired Killer - a book that doesn't exist though one analyst suggests he was referring to Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John PerkinsHmm, here we are 8 years out from 9/11 and Bin Laden decides to talk books. Something is just not right about...