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.
Archive for the ‘business’ Category
Supermarket row in Hay-on-Wye
Monday, February 13th, 2012AbeBooks: One of BC’s Top Employers for 2012
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
It’s a good day around AbeBooks. It’s Friday, the sun is out, and we’ve just learned that we have been named one of BC’s Top Employers for 2012.
Want to know what exactly that entails? From the award web site:
Now entering its eighth year, BC’s Top Employers is an annual competition organized by the editors of Canada’s Top 100 Employers. This special designation recognizes the British Columbia employers that lead their industries in offering exceptional places to work.
Employers are evaluated by the editors of Canada’s Top 100 Employers using the same eight criteria as the national competition: (1) Physical Workplace; (2) Work Atmosphere & Social; (3) Health, Financial & Family Benefits; (4) Vacation & Time Off; (5) Employee Communications; (6) Performance Management; (7) Training & Skills Development; and (8) Community Involvement. Employers are compared to other organizations in their field to determine which offers the most progressive and forward-thinking programs.
Scanning the other winners, we are definitely in good company – there are some excellent, innovative businesses on the list. And we’re already so lucky even to live in British Columbia. We’re honored to be included. If you’d like to work here and see why we landed on the list, Peruse Our Job Listings and we’d love to hear from you.
25 Things Learned From Opening a Bookstore
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
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 only have I been wistfully dreaming of opening a bookstore, I’ve also been unrealistically romanticizing the hell out of the idea. Still, for all the pitfalls and drawbacks and foibles and pain, it sounds like something I’d like to do.
Here is the list, funny and insightful:
1. People are getting rid of bookshelves. Treat the money you budgeted for shelving as found money. Go to garage sales and cruise the curbs.
2. While you’re drafting that business plan, cut your projected profits in half. People are getting rid of bookshelves.
3. If someone comes in and asks where to find the historical fiction, they’re not looking for classics, they want the romance section.
4. If someone comes in and says they read a little of everything, they also want the romance section.
5. If someone comes in and asks for a recommendation and you ask for the name of a book that they liked and they can’t think of one, the person is not really a reader. Recommend Nicholas Sparks.
6. Kids will stop by your store on their way home from school if you have a free bucket of kids books. If you also give out free gum, they’ll come every day and start bringing their friends.
7. If you put free books outside, cookbooks will be gone in the first hour and other non-fiction books will sit there for weeks. Except in warm weather when people are having garage sales. Then someone will back their car up and take everything, including your baskets.
8. If you put free books outside, someone will walk in every week and ask if they’re really free, no matter how many signs you put out . Someone else will walk in and ask if everything in the store is free.
9. No one buys self help books in a store where there’s a high likelihood of personal interaction when paying. Don’t waste the shelf space, put them in the free baskets.
10. This is also true of sex manuals. The only ones who show an interest in these in a small store are the gum chewing kids, who will find them no matter how well you hide them.
11. Under no circumstances should you put the sex manuals in the free baskets. Parents will show up.
12. People buying books don’t write bad checks. No need for ID’s. They do regularly show up having raided the change jar.
13. If you have a bookstore that shares a parking lot with a beauty shop that caters to an older clientele, the cars parked in your lot will always be pulled in at an angle even though it’s not angle parking.
14. More people want to sell books than buy them, which means your initial concerns were wrong. You will have no trouble getting books, the problem is selling them. Plus a shortage of storage space for all the Readers Digest books and encyclopedias that people donate to you.
15. If you open a store in a college town, and maybe even if you don’t, you will find yourself as the main human contact for some strange and very socially awkward men who were science and math majors way back when. Be nice and talk to them, and ignore that their fly is open.
16. Most people think every old book is worth a lot of money. The same is true of signed copies and 1st editions. There’s no need to tell them they’re probably not insuring financial security for their grandkids with that signed Patricia Cornwell they have at home.
17. There’s also no need to perpetuate the myth by pricing your signed Patricia Cornwell higher than the non-signed one.
18. People use whatever is close at hand for bookmarks–toothpicks, photographs, kleenex, and the very ocassional fifty dollar bill, which will keep you leafing through books way beyond the point where it’s pr0ductive.
19. If you’re thinking of giving someone a religious book for their graduation, rethink. It will end up unread and in pristine condition at a used book store, sometimes with the fifty dollar bill still tucked inside. (And you’re off and leafing once again).
20. If you don’t have an AARP card, you’re apparently too young to read westerns.
21. A surprising number of people will think you’ve read every book in the store and will keep pulling out volumes and asking you what this one is about. These are the people who leave without buying a book, so it’s time to have some fun. Make up plots.
22. Even if you’re a used bookstore, people will get huffy when you don’t have the new release by James Patterson. They are the same people who will ask for a discount because a book looks like it’s been read.
23. Everyone has a little Nancy Drew in them. Stock up on the mysteries.
24. It is both true and sad that some people do in fact buy books based on the color of the binding.
25. No matter how many books you’ve read in the past, you will feel woefully un-well read within a week of opening the store. You will also feel wise at having found such a good way to spend your days.
Profile of master bookbinder Paul Tronson
Monday, January 16th, 2012Our local paper, the Victoria Times-Colonist, profiles master bookbinder Paul Tronson, who is based on Vancouver Island in Sidney. Here is a man who has handled and repaired some of the world’s rarest books. The interview, which is very well done, reveals there is much science to his craft.
Here are examples of books in the bindery and shop, Period Fine Bindings, he opened in 2010: the 1838 first issue of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the second illustrated edition of Paradise Lost in 1695, and a 1545 edition of Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ (one of three known copies in the world).
He buys books in their worst condition, restores them, and sells them. The oldest book he’s worked on dates to the 10th century; he’s also worked on 2,000-year-old scrolls. And he’s worked on books valued from about $160 to more than $47 million.
“I build investment libraries for clients,” he says. “The return on investments are round about 12 per cent per year. Rare books can’t go down in value.”
Ann Patchett Opens Independent Bookstore in Nashville
Monday, November 21st, 2011
Ann Patchett, you’re so cool.
She’s one of my favourite authors (if you haven’t read Bel Canto and The Magician’s Assistant, they are both excellent), and she grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, which recently has been facing a cultural crisis of sorts – with the bankruptcy of Borders and the closing of a local bookstore last December, the city was nearly devoid of bookstores.
So Patchett, who’s doing quite well for herself, approached Karen Hayes, a long-time publishing veteran with a proposal, and the two embarked on a business as partners and co-owners of their new baby: a bookstore named Parnassus.
Patchett, in her touring across the country, did as much research as she could, gleaning advice from as many successful bookstore owners as possible, to try to find the magic formula of keeping an independent bookshop alive in these uncertain publishing times. The advice she got included:
-Put the children’s section as far away from the front door as possible.
-Hang signs from the ceiling, and customers will buy whatever is advertised on them.
-Make your store comforting and inclusive, smart but not snobby.
-Be small and sleek.
-Have intimate author events.
-Choose your inventory carefully.
So, had Patchett always dreamed of owning her very own bookstore? Quite the contrary.
“I have no interest in retail; I have no interest in opening a bookstore,” Ms. Patchett said, serenely sipping tea during a recent interview at her spacious pink brick house here. “But I also have no interest in living in a city without a bookstore.”
More from the New York Times.
Should you pay for author events?
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011In a past life I worked in the music industry, promoting various live performances and working for a non-profit music festivals. The concept of paying an admission charge to be entertained for an evening is as natural as breathing to me so I don’t quite get what the fuss is about when it comes to paying for an author event.
The NYT certainly seems to think the world is ending and paying for an author reading is totally uncalled for but perhaps they’re just spoiled New Yorkers with hundreds of events a month and the world’s publishing machine on their doorstep? Or is it me who’s off base thinking that to be entertained for an evening I should expect to shell out for a copy of the book or pay a small admission fee? I mean the author DOES have to get to the reading, and the store does have to pay for staff, rent, and what not?
Here in small town Victoria author events often have a $5 or $10 charge associated with them if you don’t purchase a book, which is still better value for money than the cinema.
What do you think?
Author opens bookstore, stocks only one title.
Monday, May 9th, 2011
Andrew Kessler, the author of “Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days with the Phoenix Mars Mission” was worried that since he was a new author, unknown and scandal-free that his book might not get the promotion and shelf space he felt that it deserved. So he opened his own bookstore and only stocked his book, 3,000 copies of it.
He even put up little signs to direct you to “New in Non-Fiction”, “science” or whatever other section of the store you might need a hand finding.
AbeBooks signs agreement to acquire ZVAB.com
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011Today, we have announced that AbeBooks Europe has signed an agreement to acquire ZVAB.com – the German online marketplace for rare and antiquarian books. ZVAB.com has more 3,000 booksellers in 27 countries and offers a unique inventory of over 35 million used, antiquarian and out-of-print books in many languages. Read the press release.
Victor Gollancz: Publishing Pioneer
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
Sometimes, there is a story behind the company publishing the stories. Victor Gollancz was a literary pioneer. His firm printed some of the best books of the 20th century and he was a marketing guru when marketing was in its infancy.
His legacy extends beyond publishing. He also campaigned against Fascism and then highlighted the mistreatment of the Germans after World War II. Read the article.
Pencil sharpener for hire
Monday, November 22nd, 2010Some bloke in New York is charging $12 a pop to sharpen a pencil reports The Guardian. On one hand, I’m thrilled some people take pencils seriously, on the other, I’m…. (oh why bother?)
Libros Schmibros – bookstore/library hybrid
Tuesday, November 9th, 2010It’s a used bookstore, no, it’s a library – I don’t know what it is, but it’s something fantastic from David Kipen.
The bookshop boss who doesn’t read
Monday, November 8th, 2010Sam Husain – the number-crunching chief executive of London’s grand old bookshop, Foyles – doesn’t read books, reports The Independent. Of course, Foyles has been doing rather well lately, so here’s the question – do you need to be bookish to be a good bookseller?
Ed Maggs interview
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010The Guardian’s money section (yes, not the book section) profiled London rare book dealer Ed Maggs at the weekend. Ed is the boss of the famous antiquarian bookselling firm, Maggs Bros. He was coy about his earnings.
“I don’t tell people what to do,” he says. “But once in a while I might need to nudge the elephant in one direction or another. We try to work by persuasion, rather than bossing, and, in any case, the firm runs itself by and large. I have to deal with, or help out, with some of the central stuff, like computers and property, but most of the time I spend bookselling.”
