Marven Krug - Biography

I am thrilled to be at Abebooks in Victoria after six years of working for that 800-pound gorilla, Amazon.com. Imagine: a company that remains focused on books and nothing but books! It’s a pleasure to be able to ignore the needs of the jewelry, electronics, gourmet food and sporting goods stores and focus on my first love, the joy of books and reading.

During my six years at Amazon I worked as the senior editor for Amazon.de, the director of Web site development for Amazon.de, and during the last few years as general manager of Amazon.ca. Before my career at Amazon, I helped launch the online edition of a major daily newspaper, and did some freelance Web site consulting work. And before all of that, I was a historian (Ph.D., University of Toronto, 1995) specializing in Wilhelmine Germany.

You may be wondering what I like to read. My favourite novel of all time is Mark Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War. Helprin’s use of the English language is stunning, even better than Michael Ondaatje in my opinion. I’ve also been known to read trashy, entertaining stuff however: Stephen King’s Song of Susannah comes to mind. And the book currently on my nightstand is Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy, a wonderful Chandleresque detective series set in pre-war Berlin. For you booksellers, a must-read title in the non-fiction realm is Paco Underhill’s Why We Buy – anyone in the business of retail should have read this book.

I look forward to hearing from you in the roundtable.

~ Marven