Another entry from our distinguished writer from Massachusetts Tom Nealon of Pazzo Books

A signed proof of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is headed for auction in November at Swann. It has a signed dedication to Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway’s fiancee and is signed to his friend and longtime employee Toby Otto Bruce, as [...]

One thing that independent booksellers should learn from the chain stores is that a customer wants a comfortable place to kill time almost as much as they want a selection of reading material. Of course not every independent can accommodate a café and comfy chairs–and we don’t want to encourage B+N-style abuse with people [...]

It seems Barnes and Noble have reversed an earlier decision and will go ahead with the sale of O.J. Simpson’s book ‘If I did it’. It seems that pre-orders have been high enough to warrant the decision. Money talks baby, who cares if he has a few blemishes on his c.v. I would really [...]

Posted by Tom Nealon of Pazzo Books
Dana’s great story about the Baum that got away reminded me of mistakes in
book selling. I traded stocks for a few years, and the most common mistake
is to get married to your screw-ups. You bought something at 20 that you
were SURE was a winner. It languishes, sits [...]

Another great post by contributing writer Dana Richardson of Windy Hill Books. We are still looking for two more contributors, if interested please contact me (editor@bookshopblog.com).
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Most dealers (myself included) love to talk about the rare, scarce and truly wonderful titles that we found on scouting trips; attributing the find to luck, fate, karma, or just [...]

Our staff member John Goodman brings us this nugget.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Best-selling author Stephen King was mistaken for a vandal as he horrified an Australian outback bookstore, local media [...]

Today, we had a little girl in our shop (about 8 or 9 years old) who said she had some books she wanted to sell and would I be interested. I looked at them and they were, quite frankly, not worth anything - even someone like me who specialises in new books and is still [...]

One of the nice things about having contributors to the blog is that I also get a few extra sets of eyeballs surfing for great content. Tom Nealon of Pazzo books and The Bookshop Blog brought this great posting to my attention.
It is by Ian J. Kahn of Lux Mentis Lux Orbis.
This has led me [...]

I get asked this pretty regularly and I wish a had a good answer. Something like, “I was always surrounded by books in the house and my mother was a librarian…”, or maybe “I was sitting under a tree when a Gore Vidal book fell from a well perched reader, when I awoke - [...]

Do you know what a meme is? As I write this the word itself is underlined in red. My PC doesn’t know what a meme is. Late last year I read a book by Richard Dawkins so ya, I happen to know what it is. Isn’t that exactly why we do what we do, selling [...]