Reading Copy Book Blog

A book about mushrooms topped AbeBooks’ most expensive sales in March 2012. Wait…don’t click off. This is a special book and sold for $13,916. Published in 1675, Theatrum Fungorum by Franciscus van Sterbeeck was the first book to be dedicated entirely to fungi. Frans van Sterbeeck was a Flemish priest with a passion for botany, [...]

Plans to build a supermarket have caused uproar in Hay-on-Wye, the used book capital of the world, reports the Daily Telegraph. Reading through this story, I am reminded a little of Blot on the Landscape by Tom Sharpe.

As someone who has often wistfully dreamed of opening my own bookstore (with a lovely soft couch-and-cushion section with story hour for kids, free coffee for grown-ups, and a leave-a-book-take-a-book section for swaps..), I enoyed reading this blog post called “25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore”. It further confirmed my suspicion that not [...]

Welcome to AbeBooks’ Book Collecting Guide – a new educational section of the website dedicated to helping you understand the basic elements of book collecting and the terminology of booksellers. Our guide covers everything from what to collect to caring for your book collection. The guide includes an in-depth glossary of book terms (full of [...]

This video is designed to help people understand some of the jargon used by booksellers when describing the physical aspects of a book. I’m sure you can figure out what the spine is but do you know your hinge from your joint? What about the endpapers? I recommend the AbeBooks glossary for learning more about [...]

‘Keep calm and carry on’ is a worthy motto. The Telegraph reports on Barter Books’ battle over the rights to merchandise goods carrying this wartime slogan. Barter Books, in the UK, is a long-time AbeBooks bookseller and owns one of only two surviving wartime originals of this famous poster. Do visit their bookshop in Alnwick, [...]

A New York City book thief met in his match in Donald Davis of East Village Books in St Mark’s Place, who was a wrestler in high school. The NY Post reports. Three cheers for Donald. (Let’s the hope the thief gets thrown in the Big House where the tough guys will ask what his [...]

Has the UK’s book-buyers given up on chick lit? The Independent asks why sales for some major writers are tanking. Even books from Marian Keyes and Jodi Picoult are remaining on the shelves. Anyone familiar with a book called The Tipping Point?

Last month I was in San Francisco and visited three booksellers who sell on AbeBooks. This is the video of what I saw in the Brick Row Book Shop, the Argonaut Book Shop and the Russian Hill Bookstore. All three are well established part of the Bay Area’s literary scene. The Brick Row Book Shop [...]

A bookseller by the name of Larry McMurtry from Archer City in Texas explains how to run a used bookstore – lots of books and cheap real estate – in Business Week. I’m sure I’ve heard of that guy somewhere else.