Stop the Presses! In what I hope is just the beginning of city and municipal support for independent booksellers all across this land, the City of San Francisco, partnering with nonprofit Working Solutions and the Small Business Development Center, awarded grants to 11 bookstores. You heard it right. 11 bookstores receiving grants from the city they reside in to keep up the good work. The grants range from $2-12,000 and are as much for the role bookshops play as a social hub then as "simply places to purchase reading material." If that doesn't seem like a big enough gift from...
A Tale of Two Cities: Amazon opens a bookstore while Indiebound adds a ‘Buy Now’ button
Photo: Sam Machkovech Here comes the next tremor in the book universe. Amazon.com, the world's largest online bookseller, has opened it's first physical bookshop! Amazon Books has opened in Seattle's University District just a few miles from Amazon headquarters. It's 5,000 square feet with a majority of the space dedicated to the almighty book. By combining new display tactics (all books are face out!), a largely crowdsourced inventory, and a seamless ebook purchase option Amazon Books is open for business. After all the years Amazon was paving the way to sell books online, completely upending the bookselling and publishing fields in...
Independent Bookstore Day is Saturday May, 2
Are you ready for the first ever nationwide Independent Bookstore Day? Building on the success of last year's inaugural California Bookstore Day, independent bookstores across the country are getting ready for this day of celebration. And why not - after a brutal run that saw more than half our independent bookshops wiped out things have stabilized and a glimmer of hope has returned and seems to be getting brighter. Over 400 bookstores are part of the festivities and there is plenty of cool swag being produced for this special day. From signed prints by graphic novelist Chris Ware and Captain Underpants...
Serial book litterbug caught in Colorado
Bookselling has always been a tough business and since the rise of Amazon it has become a near impossible undertaking. Whatever barriers to entry that existed previously where obliterated with the advent of e-commerce. A unique username and a valid credit card have become the only requirement to become a "bookseller". Enter Glenn Pladsen who purchased the stock of a used bookstore that was closing in Boulder, Colorado eight years ago. His hope was to set up shop on Amazon and become a bookseller. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out. He soon realized that the race to the bottom pricing that is a pillar of...
Health update: Printed Books in Satisfactory Condition
artist rendering of Jeff Kinney's forthcoming bookshop Lots of good news floating around recently on the health of the printed book. Jeff Kinney, author of the wildly popular "Diary of a Wimpy Kid' series is opening a bookstore. "I feel angry that so many bookstores have gone away" Kinney told the Boston Globe. "People love books and they don’t want to see them go away. We’d like to be a part of that movement." At Digital Book World, Dana Beth Weinberg tells us Why Authors and Readers Still Want Print. Citing the important 2014 PEW study, E-Reading Rises as Device Ownership Jumps, one thing...