AbeBooks' Reading Copy

Ever wondered what the AbeBooks HQ looks like? Probably not, but here’s a video tour of our office in Victoria, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island, in Canada for anyone who is interested. As I sit here writing this blog post, I can see float planes taking off, ships and yachts going past, and the Olympic [...]

Do you know who Steven T. Murray is? How about Reg Keeland? They are actually the same person. Steven T. Murray (his real name) is a book translator and Reg Keeland is this fake name. Murray is (partially) well known for translating Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy from Swedish into English. He’s also translated Henning Mankell’s [...]

Question – what’s the connection between this fantastic British TV advert for cream cakes and Salman Rushdie? Don’t rush off to Google. I’ll tell you. Mr Rushdie wrote the ‘Naughty. But Nice.’ tagline for this famous advertising campaign back when he was a struggling writer. This particular ad aired in 1984 and stars comedians Les [...]

Some 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?)

Job-seekers interested in working for Internet pioneer AbeBooks.com are invited to attend a careers open house on Tuesday, September 21 at the company’s headquarters. Located in Victoria, BC, AbeBooks (as you all know) is an online marketplace for new, used, rare and out-of-print books. The company was founded in 1996 and bought by Amazon.com, Inc. [...]

Meet the librarian who takes care of “45,000 books of scripture printed in more than 2,000 languages during six centuries.” The profile comes from the Catholic News Services – an organisation that’s probably glad to have the opportunity to write about rare books right now.

A few weeks ago, I ordered a book from one of our sellers, Yuko Horiuchi from Carleton Place near Ottawa. When the book arrived, the package also contained a price-list for Yuko’s other career – seed selling. Yuko is a professional gardener/professional bookseller, and sells books and open pollinated seeds, including fruits like Black Elderberry [...]

When I saw the headline – Julie & Julia author takes job in butcher shop – I was thrilled. Excellent, I thought, now we won’t have to suffer through any more ridiculous books about trying to cook an over-complicated French recipe every day. Sadly, we are going to have to suffer through another book from [...]

Meet the Booker Prize-winning author who is still driving buses.

Boe Rushing reports from the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar – it’s day five. —- Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better today happens. I’ll keep it short because it is very late. Greg Gibson, the nautical specialist, gave the most touching talk of the seminar. After a discussion on auctions we had one. [...]