I can't wait to get the whole story on this one. It already sounds like one of the worst bookstore endings on record.Here are the gorey details of the court-ordered Gotham Book Mart auction:-It cost $1000 just for the right to attend-The auction started an hour late-There was no catalog of the items-There were no lot numbers-Prospective buyers had less than an hour to look through a bookstore that has been around since 1920!“You buy them blind,” is how one of auctioneer employees put it-Right before the auction began most of the prime material was pulled from the sale-Finally, the...
A Novel Way For a Writer to Get Paid
The government of Ireland has hatched a plan that will pay authors a royalty for their books that are checked out at the local library.Here is how it works:"authors will be conferred with an exclusive right to allow the lending of their works in public libraries...in return the authors would receive a royalty payment for the lending of their work."The program will be publicly funded and will not cost the library user anything.I have often thought that this arrangement should also apply in the used book market.There is no reason an author shouldn't be compensated for a sale of a...
Wounded Booksellers Kicked by U. S. Post Office
The U.S. Post Office doing away with surface mail is a no-brainer. Only 2.7% of all international mail is sent via surface mail (or sea-mail as it should be called since the mail spends most of its time in cargo ships on the high seas). The "slow boat to china" routine doesn't really mesh with the new wired world.The problem is:The 2.7% is made up of almost 100% of todays independent booksellers. Removing the primary option for delivery of your overseas orders cannot be a good thing. Of course these changes do not impact the major aggregators like Amazon who...
The History of Financial Speculation: A Collection Hits the Market
This is what your brain looks like on stocks:Christopher Dennistoun, a British antiquarian book dealer and stock trader, has a amassed what arguably could be the largest collection of printed material on the history of the stock market and financial speculation.There are over 700 items in the collection including:-a London jobber’s sheet published in 1698 by John Castaing “at his Office at Jonathan’s Coffee-house” that posts the prices of marketable securities all over Europe, from Hamburg to Cadiz.- The 1898 book “The Game in Wall Street and How To Play It Successfully” which offered one of the first stock charts,...
When You Lose Your Heritage
Probably the biggest event in the antiquarian bookselling community since the internet arrived was announced a couple of weeks ago.Heritage Book Shop, one of the leading antiquarian bookshops of the world, has announced a major downsizing that is sure to affect the trade for years to come.Founded in Los Angeles in 1963 by brothers Louis and Benjamin Weinstein, Heritage has blossomed into a pillar of the antiquarian bookselling trade in this country and abroad.The Weinstein's have created one of the most beautiful high profile shops in the world and their inventory consists of some of the finest material available in...