Nora O'Neill

Detecting water damage in less than a second

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Once a book gets wet, it’s likely to develop mold.  Even if its now apparently dry, some damage has already been done and you generally want to avoid them all together.  A dousing also is a lot more obvious than a book that’s just been kept somewhere damp for a long time.  When you’re quickly perusing a large pile of books and deciding which to take, you often don’t want to devote the time to individually opening and examining each one in detail. First you want to make a quick cut, then take a second look.

These are tip offs that you should either take a a little closer look at a book or immediately move it to the “no” pile.  Once you’re skilled at this, you may be able to sort books as fast as you can pick them up.  These are tips for when you have hundreds, or even thousands of books to sort through to decide what you want.  Unless it’s something you KNOW is still worth buying even with water damage, these tip offs will general land a book on the reject pile right away.

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Why aren't out of print books just made into e-books?

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This seems a simple enough question.  For new books, publishers clearly just use the files they already have on their computer to create a download in the correct format. Or send it to a small publishing unit to print a copy from master files.  It’s not much trouble to convert current books, but even ones … Read more

Rare books as an investment

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Every time the stock market starts acting like a a yoyo on a rollercoaster we notice an uptick in rare book sales in a specific price range: ones that have a similar price to most bluechip stocks.  Maybe it’s just us, but it looks like as investors get antsy they decide to to diversify by … Read more

Storing & displaying books to keep them in best condition

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Book shelves

Storage and display are the bane of the bookseller’s and book collector’s existence.  The more valuable the book and the better the condition it is to start with, the more likely poor display and storage are to damage the book.  Reading copies are already so far gone in condition, they’ll tolerate less than optimal condition with little hit to value.  But a fine first edition with a fine jacket needs special handling.

Books need to be kept somewhere cool and dry.  If you live somewhere humid and hot, this will be the thing you spend the most time fighting. You’ll need air conditioning.

Conversely, somewhere TOO dry can damage bindings. Books are like Goldilocks, they like it in between.

Heat can also damage books as it can cause mold and bacteria to grow on the item.

Direct sunlight can cause the cover to fade or crack.

Storing books packed too tight against another book can cause it to warp around the other book if its taller.  Or it may stick to the other book.  Standing it open to display can cause the spine to warp. Standing it up without any support may cause it to tilt sideways.

Handling can also wear the top and bottom of the spine and dustjacket (if it has one) just from it being pulled on and off the shelf or even when it’s jostled. Books with raised lettering will also have it rub off if they’re too tightly packed or if jostled against other books.

With so much that can go wrong, how SHOULD you store and display your books?

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What Google thinks of books

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Google will “helpfully” try to autocomplete searches for you.  Sometimes these suggestions are actually useful.  Sometimes they’re hilarious. Sometimes they’re just plain bizarre.  Often looking at the whole list gives you a vague idea of what the general public thinks as those are common enough searches for Google to suggest them.

So what does the average person searching the internet think about books?  What does Google think they’re looking for?

Reading is…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Kindle will be dead in four years

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Archaeopteryx transitional fossil

With the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, and netbooks, Amazon will most likely announce the end of production of the Kindle device within four years. The APP will still be around for other devices, but the actual device will cease production. You can see the shift starting with some of the marketing for Amazon as they have started promoting the app version for other devices as much as, and often more than, the device itself.  The star is the DELIVERY of the content, not the actual reader.

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Where have all The Great Books gone?

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It’s the time of the year where students have to pick up the required summer reading for high school.  While these lists are filled with good books, they are increasingly light on what are often referred to as “The Great Books.”  They aren’t gone, but they no longer comprise the bulk of the required reading. … Read more

How ebooks will make the printed book even BETTER

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Everywhere you look you see increasingly paniced headlines that ebooks are killing printed books. In some areas they are… in some other they’re bringing books TO print that would never have seen the light of day before.   Don’t worry, the printed book will still be around… but it’ll be less a mass consumer product and more of a experience for those who truly connect with a book.  But there will be shakeups in the distribution portion in the meantime. sometimes painful changes.

Like any new technology, it can bring about big changes.  First early adopters try it out and it either then trickles down to the masses or withers on the vine.  Then someone cracks the technology to ensure consistency of experience.  Then comes the format war, as the market fights over what will become the “standard” version consumed by the masses.  Then comes a lull as the standard is enhanced, refined, or made cheaper.

Ebooks were around before the Kindle.  You could get portable readers for them,  But they were expensive and weren’t very user friendly, from either the production or consumption end. The quality was inconsistent.  The same was true with digital music for a long time.  And video.  The internet constantly lowered the cost of entry at BOTH ends and also made consumption so much easier.

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