By Bruce McKinney

There are books that are important and others that are valuable. For book collectors and dealers the everyday focus is on value. Readers place their emphasis on content. For many the summer is a chance to escape the hubbub and claptrap of everyday existence. At such moments many hope for an exceptional book to take along. The car is packed, the beach house waits. Friends will arrive soon enough. For ...more

By Michael Stillman

Alibris recently announced a partnerships with bricks and mortar/online bookseller Borders. Borders is the second largest chain of bookstores in America, trailing only Barnes and Noble in size. Alibris has not only launched a Borders Marketplace online for the bookseller, but will service in-store kiosks being installed in Borders superstores. Customers will be able to purchase used books from Alibris ...more

By Bruce McKinney

On Saturday July 12th, at around 6:00 am, a scouting party of motivated book buyers will prepare to head off for the Friends of the C. H. Booth Library Book Sale in Newtown, Connecticut. Some will have travelled hundreds, a few even a thousand miles, to be here this morning. As book buyers they are fulfilling a necessary and in fact one of the final roles in this centipede-like process that has involved forty ...more

By Michael Stillman

One of the most important auctions of scientific books, the Richard Green Library, took place at Christie's in New York on June 17. The auction set price records for many authors, including Galileo, but most attention was focused on a seemingly mundane item, a simple telephone book. There must be tens if not hundreds of millions of these massive books printed every year. Twelve months later they are in the ...more

By Renee Magriel Roberts

Over the last few years we have been steadily increasing our capacity to handle overseas sales. In an increasingly global marketplace, this seemed not only prudent, but also absolutely necessary.

I've dealt with many of the challenges we have faced in previous columns on global trading, currency conversion, and insurance. After now having had some experience with developing shipping alternatives, ...more

By Bruce McKinney

When pundits discuss the economy the emphasis is always on growth measured on an inflation adjusted basis. So if growth, as measured as increase in GDP is 4.5% and inflation 2% net growth is 2.5%. Sustainable growth in the United States has been considered, in the post-World War II era, to be in the mid to high 2 percents. In the past ten years the Internet has changed economic expectations by introducing ...more

By Michael Stillman

The announcement kind of slipped under the radar, but its impact is enormous to the future of the digitization and online availability of the texts of millions of books. Microsoft obviously wanted the notice to be low key. The software giant announced in late May that it is pulling the plug on their massive book digitization program, Live Search Books, along with its less well-known Live Search ...more

By Karen Wright

The 8th Annual Gold Rush Book Fair was a cool place to be on a hot summer's day in the Gold Country. The best thing about having the fair in Grass Valley, California, is that it is only two hours from our store in Virginia City, Nevada. With gas prices what they are, any way we can save gas in the truck is appreciated. We had the monster Suburban loaded down with bookshelves and eighteen boxes of the best of ...more

By Michael Stillman

AbeBooks has brought its "no frills" bookselling to Brazil with the launching of a new Gojaba site for that country. Gojaba offers a basic listing service for nations either without as developed a book trade as the West or those using a non-Latin based alphabet. Unlike the regular AbeBooks sites, Gojaba does not provide any type of order processing or charging of credit cards. It simply refers leads to the ...more

By Bruce McKinney

A web site that starts out as a database, develops recurring searches and daily reports, adds electronic footnoting, an inventory system and in 2006 a listing site can be accused of being over-reaching. On AE we've done all these things. For the past six months we have been shifting to faster production servers that use more processors and more current software. A week ago we substantially completed the first ...more

By Michael Stillman

Biblio.com moved into the field of free inventory management software with the announcement last month that it would be offering the BookHound program, developed by Bibliopolis, at no charge. While undoubtedly Biblio is hopeful that those who take advantage of the free software will post their books on the Biblio site, there are no such requirements. Anyone may download and use the software, for internal ...more

By Bruce McKinney

This month the American east coast plays host to seven of the ten book fairs identified to us. In Europe the summer is apparently more a time to get away than to browse bookshops so there only one event is scheduled, the Ilkley Book Fair in the UK.

The biggest single event is the Comic-Con in San Diego. If you attend this show youˇ¦ll learn that comics are no laughing matter. The promoters are ...more

This month we review 15 new bookseller catalogues in Section Two. Hodern House has issued an absolutely stunning catalogue of a major collection relating to famed explorer Captain James Cook. John Windle Antiquarian Bookseller has issued a combination printed and digital catalogue to provide a thorough and detailed look at a collection of illuminated manuscripts. New catalogues of signed documents and autographs have been ...more