Here is one for spreading the love this holiday season.Some groups are calling for a boycott of the Chapters and Indigo bookstores in Canada. Seems like the majority owners support a charity for soldiers in the Israeli Army called Heseg the Foundation for Lone SoldiersIsn't a portion of the proceeds from the current government bestseller by the Iraq Study Group going to a charity to help our soldiers families? So if I am against the war and all its collateral damage should I not buy the report?and while we are taking some leaps- since the conservative Rupert Murdoch owns the...
Books: Espresso Style or Another Nail in the Coffin of the New Bookstore
And finally I'm going to thank all the booksellers of the world. Remember, Brokeback Mountain was a book before it was a movie. From the humblest paperback exchange to the masters of the great bookshops of the world, all are contributors to the survival of the culture of the book. A wonderful culture, which we mustn't lose. Thank you." --Larry McMurtry from his Oscar acceptance speech March 5, 2006The number of independent new bookstores in the U.S has gone from around 4,700 in 1993 to about 2,500 today. In 13 years close to 50% of shops that sell new books...
Sales Damage and Low Self-Esteem
Bookweb.org, the website for The American Bookseller Association (ABA), has a story on how the recent storm that tore up the Pacific Northwest affected some of the regions new bookstores. Sounds like the worst physical damage hit Parkplace Books in Kirkland, WA tough every bookstore mentioned reported sales damage during and immediately after the storm hit. Though the story focused on only a handful of stores you can bet it is a good indicator for the whole bookselling community of the Northwest.Speaking of sales damage- Publisher's Weekly has an article titled "Year End Brings Indie Closings" Murder Ink in NYC,...
A Couple of Updates and a Few Headlines
A few updates on recent posts:Re: Google Book Search-I blogged a few days ago about the inherent danger in having a private company being in charge of digitizing our written heritage then yesterday word came that that the Alfred A. Sloan foundation donated $1 million dollars to the Internet Archive to digitize the holdings of the Boston Public Library, the Getty Research Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Excellent start.Link to original postLink to article on Sloan grantRe: The guy who wrote the worlds longest diary which is housed in 80+ boxes in the Special Collections of Washington State University....
Book Design, Bibles and Some Projections
The Book Design Review blog picks his favorite cover designs of 2006 The current issue of the New Yorker has an article on the best selling book of the year, wait make that every year- Here is a snippet:The Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles—twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter bookThere is a short post on Metroblogging San Francisco on visiting a Barnes &...