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...
An Illiterate Bookseller Thrives
Her name is Mary and she has been selling books for over 30 years. She is known as the bookseller who cannot read!She runs a bookshop in Chennai, the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The bookshop does not have an address.Even though she "doesn’t know how to read, she digs out all the books her customers need – from 5th standard texts to engineering guides, law to Chartered Accountancy, test banks to crack IIT’s entrance exam, the GMAT and GRE to comics and classics."And like many of old time booksellers she can be a little grumpy:I am telling...
house with bookshop and cafe
Nothing like retiring to a nice vacation spot outside of Tokyo and asking your architect to build "a house with a bookshop and a cafe where neighbors and visitors can stop by."It's called the Izu Book Cafe and it also doubles as the home of a newly retired couple. It was designed by Atelier Bow-Wow.Selling books out of your home is far from a new idea, think of the throngs that abandoned a retail presence to move home and sell books online, but what is interesting about this project is that the space is conceived from the beginning as a place to both live...
Pinterest meets Amazon at Scroll.Am
Scroll.Am homepageImagine taking a Pinterest-style scroll through the Amazon product database.Scroll.Am, was developed by Amsterdam-based designer and med student Jonathan Bouman. Bouman, who derives his motivation from his love of mashups, scrolling and Amazon, built a similar site last year which provided a nifty way to scroll Reddit.Every product leads with a visual and all the data and sharing opportunities you need is just a mouse-over away. Books category home page Clearly applicable to non-new books as well. With a little tweaking you could see it as a formidable online-catalog format for booksellers. The idea of wrapping the image with the necessary related content and delivering...
Advertising on the dust jacket
Dust jacket used by The Book Inn Lending Library, Seattle Washington ca. 1930's. Long before the Kindle Lending Library there were actual brick and mortar lending libraries. These were not public libraries but part of the offerings of book and department stores. Most charged a daily, weekly or monthly rate and many used their own printed dust jackets to both protect the book and as a revenue stream.Above is one used by The Book Inn Lending Library in Seattle. It features a slew of local advertising from neighborhood merchants (the library was in the now trending Ballard neighborhood). The ads feature the usual suspects;...