"Insomniacs used to read, but now they turn on TV and there's 200 channels, with everything from the pope saying mass in Brazil to Girls Gone Wild to QVC selling cheap diamonds" - John Shaver talking about the closing of his shop, Shaver's Books in Huntsville, Alabama, after almost 20 years in business."Your heart can lie to you, but your balance sheet won't...The numbers reached out to me and said, 'John, it's time.'" says Shaver.Shaver also points out that the old mantra for retail success - location, location, location has now evolved to price, price, price and there is no...
Thoughts on the Book Pyro
Talk about an independent bookstore going up in flames. Tom Wayne just had his 15 minutes of Warholian fame. How long he will live in infamy is another story.You see Tom Wayne has decided to burn all the books he couldn't sell and hide his actions under the umbrella of protest.He was protesting "what he sees as society’s diminishing support for the printed word." He called it an "act of art."The burning of books no matter what the motivation can never be a positive. It is ultimately, a selfish act of destruction and to claim that nobody wanted them as...
How Far Will The LongPen Reach?
In a few hours Margret Atwood and company will unleash LongPen on the BEA. From London to Walla Walla authors will be signing books for BEA attendees from the comfort of their own home (or publishers office).It is billed as "the world's first real time, pen and ink long-distance autographing device" which produces "legally valid" signatures.LongPen is the next generation of the Autopen, a technology first invented in 1803 (it was called a polygraph) and was used extensively by Thomas Jefferson.These days it is a required technology for many politicians, celebrities and sports stars who simply cannot personally keep up...
The Gotham Incident
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...
Book Prayer
Worshipers at Jimbocho, Tokyo's book district, home to over 100 bookshops.Image 1 courtesy perkeImage 2 courtesy aptronym