Last weekend we had a booth at the Boston Antiquarian Book &
Ephemera Fair which was part of Boston Antiques weekend.
..It’s funny that a recent post here was about optimism, because no where is the typical
bookseller’s lack of optimism more evident than at a book fair…

Sure, I have a shiny new magnetic name tag that, in lieu of my real name reads, Bookseller. Yet, instead of this title, it could read Book Finder, Computer Tech, Cleaning Lady, Don’t ask me – I’m new and, most importantly, Customer Service Agent.

Part 1 of Going for a Guinness Record can be found here
I promised an update on our attempt to set a
Guinness World Record selling Romance Paperbacks.
This was a case where the peripheral benefits
were far better than the direct benefits. The day
of the sale we sold 587 paperback romances out of
the 8,144 volumes we had. A […]

In my experience, value isn’t necessarily in the book. It’s in the way one
sells the book. It’s in the person to whom one plans to sell the book. It’s
in the knowledge a bookseller has that allows him to identify a ’sleeper’ at
the bottom of a dusty cardboard box of library discards.

“It doesn’t seem like you really wanted to be an academic, any more than you want to work in publishing,” he said. “The only job you ever really liked and were good at was working in the bookstore.”
My lightbulb came on like a dimmer – slowly, but steadily.

Abe Books has just announced to book dealers that they will soon be taking an 8% commission on all shipping rates. Their reasoning is that it will help keep shipping charges down. This does not make sense to my 7 year old friend. He asks, “How can an increase lower the rate?” hmmmm…

Clicks and bricks, bricks and clicks - people throw these around, and they
are certainly descriptive of a business that operates both real world and
virtual stores, but what they lack in practice is a true synergy between
the businesses. I know for our shop that we’re really just running two
largely parallel businesses out of the same location.

As many of you know the world of literature (one of the many worlds he occupied) lost a legendary figure this month when Sir Arthur C. Clarke passed away. In January he gave an interview from his hospital room in Sri Lanka.
Clark smiled. “I’m often asked when I think the space […]

My recent trip to a tropical destination was supposed to be an intellectual quest of sorts. Read some books about books; come up with “The Plan”. Of course, what ended up happening was a lot of staring blankly out into the ocean and drinking free Brahma…

This Saturday, here at Colette’s:
Good Food + Hungry Minds, we’re attempting to set
a Guinness World Record for ‘the most romances
sold in one business day by a brick and mortar
independent bookstore.’ And we don’t even sell
romances.