By Bruce McKinney

Nine is the Charm

The Americana Exchange begins its ninth year with the release of AE Monthly today. I never thought achieving success for this project would be easy, in part because we joined the flow of goods and services migrating to the internet well before the rare books, manuscripts and ephemera audience was prepared to prefer it over traditional venues and alternatives. In 2002 the trade, ...more

By Michael Stillman

Barnes and Noble, America's largest bricks and mortar bookseller, made two potentially important announcements this past month. The word "potential" must be used with any moves the company makes at this point, as the viability of any large chain of bookstores in this digital age is not beyond question. Barnes and Noble has been waging an uphill battle for years against online retailer Amazon.com, and its ...more

By Tom McKinney

Until Apple's iPad was released there were few, if any mobile devices (other than smartphones) that featured both a color screen and e-book reader software. Dedicated e-book readers have in the past all featured a black and white "e-ink" display, with some having smaller color screens used for navigation. The arguments for e-ink ...more

By Bruce McKinney

Five years after Katrina ravaged New Orleans, the city has substantially recovered. Life has returned to a semblance of normal, those parts of the city built on high ground flourishing even as lower lying areas continue to struggle. For Neal Auction Company on 4038 Magazine Street sitting well above the flood crest in the old city as disaster ensued, the worst problems were averted. Later, with the city ...more

By Michael Stillman

Last month, we ran a wonderful story about a book that was placed on consignment with dealer Jeffrey Thomas (click here to read it). Sadly, Mr. Thomas died, and by the time the consignor realized this, the book had been sold at auction. Fortunately, with some research and retracing ...more

By Susan Halas

Why do book dealers need bibliographies? Why do book buyers and collectors need them too? Aren't those things that only benefit librarians and archivists?

Not so, says Vic Zoschak, 57, owner of Tavistock Books, an antiquarian bookseller in Alameda, Ca. He has gained quite a following with his annual class on using reference sources. Usually held in the spring, the free one day event will celebrate ...more

By Bruce McKinney

Material for the AED: A million dealer records

The AED, the Americana Exchange Database, the largest collection of auction records for the books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera fields online and for that matter, ever assembled, currently includes 2.7 million full text records, and will surpass four million as we add ever more extensive files of older auctions. We will also add a million records selected ...more

By Michael Stillman

A decision came down early last month from the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., concerning an almost century-old dispute for ownership of a library consisting of some 12,000 books and 25,000 handwritten pages of personal writings and teachings. It is a story filled with intrigue. It involves Communists and Nazis, the Russians and the Americans, revolution and war, confiscations and thefts, and an ...more

By Tom McKinney

Last month I wrote about how literary agent Andrew Wylie had struck an exclusive e-book deal with Amazon.com. It looked to be a potentially powerful precedent for authors and the electronic rights to their older works - with publishers cut out entirely. Obviously, publishers were not happy. In fact, Random House, the world's biggest ...more

By Bruce McKinney

An Auction Coming into View

The dog days of August, when the lucky and entitled sip Margaritas and soak up rays, are also the time in the auction business to get ahead on fall commitments that left unmet soon drain the sunlight and sanity out of a schedule that quickens as the days shorten. There's no doubt the people in this do it for the intellectual challenge. The money is good but not often ...more

By Michael Stillman

The annual list of things this year's entering college freshman class either does not know, or has always assumed to be true, has been released, and as always, it is a sobering group. Beloit College in Wisconsin issues this list every year, and it is both amusing and, for older folks, terrifying to realize what their children or grandchildren have never experienced or have always known. For those with a love ...more

The number of catalogues printed during the heart of summer wanes, as both booksellers and their customers take off for vacation. This month, we received just seven new catalogues, which we review in Section Two.

There is a catalogue of travel works offered by Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books. Jeff Weber Rare Books presents rare medical and ophthalmology books. There is literature, film and sports from James Pepper Rare ...more