And finally I'm going to thank all the booksellers of the world. Remember, Brokeback Mountain was a book before it was a movie. From the humblest paperback exchange to the masters of the great bookshops of the world, all are contributors to the survival of the culture of the book. A wonderful culture, which we mustn't lose. Thank you." --Larry McMurtry from his Oscar acceptance speech March 5, 2006The number of independent new bookstores in the U.S has gone from around 4,700 in 1993 to about 2,500 today. In 13 years close to 50% of shops that sell new books...
A Couple of Updates and a Few Headlines
A few updates on recent posts:Re: Google Book Search-I blogged a few days ago about the inherent danger in having a private company being in charge of digitizing our written heritage then yesterday word came that that the Alfred A. Sloan foundation donated $1 million dollars to the Internet Archive to digitize the holdings of the Boston Public Library, the Getty Research Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Excellent start.Link to original postLink to article on Sloan grantRe: The guy who wrote the worlds longest diary which is housed in 80+ boxes in the Special Collections of Washington State University....
Book Design, Bibles and Some Projections
The Book Design Review blog picks his favorite cover designs of 2006 The current issue of the New Yorker has an article on the best selling book of the year, wait make that every year- Here is a snippet:The Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles—twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter bookThere is a short post on Metroblogging San Francisco on visiting a Barnes &...
A Couple from the Google Monster
There has been much hoopla over the launch of Google's new patent search tool. I am pretty certain all the info was already easily available at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) but hey this is a Google world.I had to dig deep to find this book related one. A patent for the "Slanted Book" designed in 1974 by Richard A. Kjarsgaard. Here is the diagram:From what I can make out it looks like the same book design perfected by my dog Roxy who had a brief book chewing phase while a puppy.Much more important is the article...
The Bookseller Manifesto Part I: I am a Bookseller – New Definitions for a Shifting Landscape
There are not many industries in the last 10 years that have undergone the volcanic eruptions that the world of bookselling has. The world of the antiquarian and used bookseller has been turned upside down. A dinosaur of a trade that pretty much moved at turtle speed for most of the 20th century has had it shell torn off in the last decade. The new bookseller has feared worse. It has become almost impossible to sell new books. Though as a whole the new book world was not as set in its ways as the bookseller in the resale market...