Banned Booksellers Week has begun with a bang. David Streitfeld's piece in the New York Times has kicked off what some hope will be a defining moment in the history of online bookselling. For the week of November 5 to 11, 2018, booksellers around the world will remove their inventory from Abebooks, an Amazon company, in a show of support for their brethren in South Korea, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Russia who were told they can no longer sell on their platform. Many were angered at the flippant response provided by Abebooks as to why the booksellers were removed claiming...
More Independent Resistance: This time from the Antiquarians
In mid-April 2014 the Austrian antiquarian bookseller Norbert Donhofer was elected president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), an umbrella organization compromised of twenty- two national associations, including our own ABAA, representing thirty-four countries and around 1,800 individual affiliates. In his first interview as President he noted that the most important project he was working on at the moment was "a strategic part-time cooperation with AbeBooks." He went on: The aim is that ILAB booksellers listing on AbeBooks are highlighted on the Abe homepage as the world's leading experts. This would be an enormous advantage for all ILAB...
AbeBooks E-mail Database Hacked
This email was recently sent by AbeBooks to its customers informing them that their email database had been breached:Epsilon Informs AbeBooks of E-mail Database BreachWe have been informed by Epsilon, a third-party vendor we use to send e-mails, that an unauthorized person outside their company accessed files that included e-mail addresses of some AbeBooks customers. Epsilon has advised us that the files that were accessed did not include any customer information other than email addresses. As a reminder, AbeBooks will never ask customers for personal or account information in an e-mail. Please exercise caution if you get any emails that...
The World’s Most Expensive Inexpensive Bible
Our friend, Maurice Earp, bookslinger at Blackwell Rare Books in the U.K., enjoys sending reports of bizarrely priced books found on Advanced Book Exchange (ABE). I love receiving them yet I never know whether to laugh, cry, or call the book police. This is a job for Tombstone's favorite sheriff, Wyatt Earp, with whom Maurice shares nothing but surname and sharp aim.Today’s episode of Have You Lost Your Mind? concerns the the large-print edition of the Life Application Study Bible NLT, published by Tyndale House in 2009.On ABE-UK, there are seven copies being offered by the same dealer, Beagle Books,...
Notes from the Fair : Codex & The California Antiquarian Book Fair
It was a big book week in San Francisco with both the book arts and antiquarian segments of the book trade hosting their largest events of the year. I was interested to see how these events would fair in the current economic climate of doom and gloom.Well, I got good news. Books are still alive!The Codex Foundation kicked things off with The Second Biennial Codex International Book Fair and Symposium. The book fair took place on the Berkeley campus of the University of California and the symposium was held at the Berkeley Art Museum. Over 125 fine presses and book...