bookselling

Online bookseller is approached by a little old lady while he's scouring the used books at Goodwill. Would he like her recently deceased husband's collection? The books turn out to be worth not so much, but he buys them anyway to be nice to the woman. When he takes stock of the stock, many turn out to be hollow. Contained within are hundreds of Poloroids of said husband in flagrante delicto...

Seriously.... you'd think people who read books would be smarter...

It starts with a phone call from someone claiming to be an author. Then the caller asks for money. But sellers are catching on.

When BPP listener Seth Bate went to his local bookstore to buy our latest selection, The God of Animals, the bookseller said she had enjoyed the book herself, but was surprised that a man would want to read it. We thought Seth's encounter with the bookseller raised some interesting questions and wanted to throw it open to you. Is there such a thing as a "woman's book?"

Amazon.com wants you to buy things using your mobile phone, especially if you are all thumbs. On Wednesday, the e-commerce company introduced a new service called TextBuyIt that lets customers with Amazon accounts find and buy products through Amazon's Web site.

After Stranger book editor Paul Constant's article on his experiences with shoplifters in indie bookstores, he gets a response from .... a shoplifter! It's too funny. "You demonized book thieves and talked about their “underground economy”."

Preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show that bookstore sales increased 1.1% last year, to $16.77 billion. I don't think this means more books were sold than last year, since inflation eats up that 1.1%. But it's better than most years of the decade so far, where sales have dropped year to year.

After his first year running a bookstore, Brian Cassidy reflects:
* I will never run out of books. Never. There are always more books to be bought.
* A first catalog is like falling in love - everything about it seems easy and fun and exciting.
* Shelving books is oddly calming - almost meditative.
* I love my job.

Click through for more observations from a new bookseller.

In these post-Potter days, the world of book sales needs a boost, and Dan Brown is the awaited savior. If Brown writes it, they will come, but the publishing world is getting antsy.

First published: Fortnightly. — GB, London. — November 1936.

George Orwell on bookselling—its peculiarities and characters—the rarity of really bookish people and how he lost the taste for books. Read it; it's short, and it’s a very good and rather humorous essay, with lines like: “…the top of a book is the place where every bluebottle prefers to die.”

Online commerce, initially a boon to brick and mortar booksellers, has now become detrimental to the trade. The online bookselling gold rush has had a crippling influence on the traditional sellers, in many cases forcing them out of business entirely. Here are the hows and whys of it all.