scav·enge: to take or gather (something usable) from discarded material.There are hundreds of them. They have gangster names like Tommy Books and Leprechaun and roam the streets of New York in the wee hours of the morning looking for books. Nothing is off limits - dumpsters, garbage cans, anyplace that might hold a discarded book is fair game. They gather as many as they can hold and then head to the corner of 12th of Broadway and wait.What are they waiting for?9:30am. For this is the time The Strand bookstore opens and they can turn their found objects into cash!This...
Good News From China: Book Production Costs Rise
Rising paper price ups books prices in China for now and perhaps later the world is the title of Henry Sanderson piece for the Associated Press.He reports that the government "crackdown on small, polluting paper mills have caused a paper crunch in China, pushing up the price of paper by 10 percent this year and forcing printers to delay books and publishers to raise prices.""Paper mills, most of them small, inefficient operations, accounted for 17 percent of all industrial water pollution in 2005, according to the Chinese Paper Association, an industry group."Why is this price increase good news? Because it...
The Internet and the Traditional Bookseller: A Failing Relationship
Here is my piece that runs in the latest issue of Amphora, the magazine of the Alcuin Society. I have been waiting on posting this in hopes that they would be putting the new issue online but with things changing so fast in the online bookselling world I thought it was time to get it out there.I wrote the piece back in August and since then both AbeBooks and Alibris have lost their Chief Executives. A telling sign that things are 1) not what they used to be and 2) significant changes are on the horizon. One of the first...
Author wins Nestlé Children’s Book Prize. Refuses to accept the check
Author Sean Taylor won the 2007 Nestlé Children's Book Prize for When A Monster is Born.Taylor accepted the award but refused to accept the £2,500 cash prize due to "questions surrounding Nestlé’s marketing of breast-milk substitutes."Taylor consulted with campaign group Baby Milk Action(who urge you to boycott Nestle who they say are "responsible for more violations of the World Health Assembly marketing requirements for baby foods than any other company," Nestlé and "an authoritative third party with experience in the field," before making his decision to turn down the prize money. Taylor goes on to say that while "many of...
Amazon is the "secret buyer" of J.K. Rowlings "The Tales of Beedle and the Bard"
Amazon.com paid a record £1,950,000 at Sotheby's yesterday for one of the seven copies in existence of J.K. Rowling's hand-written and illustrated book of fairy-tales "The Tales of Beedle and the Bard."The Times of London originally reported that the "An anonymous collector, bidding through a dealer who usually specialises in Old Masters" was the high bidder. How that ends up being Amazon is a story of for another day.Amazon boasts that the purchase was a simple thank you to Rowling who recently concluded the record-breaking Harry Potter series. The series was a publishing hi-spot and Amazon sold millions upon millions...