Last Monday Biblio.com issued a press release stating that the site "has seen a steady decrease in traffic over the last few months...though, the bottom line conversions have increased".I actually like the business model of biblio.com better than the competing aggregators but a release like this is a little troublesome to me. This is not good news and makes me a little suspicious of their intentions.Firstly, I have never heard a company celebrate a decrease in traffic to their website. A declining traffic trend greatly reduces your ability to land new customers who in turn can become repeat customers. You...
And You Thought You Couldn’t Have Fun Making Books
Here is a YouTube special courtesy of If'n Books Thanks to Lux Mentis for posting it
Searching for a German Identity: Anselm Kiefer’s Homage to Paul Celan
Installation view at Galerie Yvon Lambert, 2006Book Patrol as been occasionally featuring Anselm Kiefer's book related works in honor of the exhibit Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth at the San Francisco Museum of Modern ArtThere is also an exhibit of his work currently showing at Galerie Yvon Lambert in Paris that deserves mention. The show is titled "Für Paul Celan" and features 10 new works being shown in two galleries.Kiefer continues his post war quest to understand the German Identity and books continue to play a seminal role in his journey.The piece on the floor in the image above is:Aschenblüme...
Crime & Punishment in the Book Arts
Book Patrol's second installment celebrating The Guild of Bookworkers 100th Anniversary show centers around two works on the theme of crime & punishmentFrom the Contemporary Juried Exhibit:Weitlauf, Ashlee. T is for Torture: Tempe, AZ, 2005. Pamphlet that uses letterpress, photo lithography, and photopolymer printing on handmade paper. The pamphlet is about the illegal torture activities that the United States is committing. It includes text that describes what the USA is involved in, what national and international laws have been broken, and testimony from torture victims.From the Retrospective Exhibition:Davis, Jerilyn Glen. Herman Melville Billy Budd Sailor: New York, 1987. 24 x...
I Love the Smell of Books in the Morning
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty. First appeared here SlateBeing a bookseller I know that smelling books is part of the job. Who knows how many books I smell a year, hundreds? thousands? It is an important step when trying to determine a books value. Does it smell musty? mildewy? damp?Steven Poole has a nice blog piece on the smell of books, "Smells Like Literary Spirit", at the Guardian Unlimited