Therese Holland Charging a browsing fee? Setting the tax and duty de minimus too high for private importations has been extremely detrimental to Australian retailers. This issue has become so big so that a couple of heavyweights in the Australian retail world Gerry Harvey and Solomon Lew have come out swinging in defence of Australian retailers. Their involvement clearly … Read more
Under Pressure or Retail is Tough Post railway reconstruction and our passing trade is still way down, the Aldi site is still a closed petrol station surrounded by barb wire and cyclone fencing and the community bank proposal is still a proposal. The council beautification is going to take time, nothing set in concrete there either … Read more
It is easy to draw parallels between the experiences of the music publishing industry and the book publishing industry and assume that everyone will be reading in e format sometime in the not too distant future and the printed book will die a natural death. But books are both a visual and tactile experience that … Read more
They said the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft agley, Well I am neither man nor mouse but my New Zealand trip was not quite what I had planned. I was going to go to Christchurch and tour the South Island but didn’t think that Christchurch would be an ideal spot for a … Read more
In my one of earliest blogs I mentioned that I visited the US on a semi annual basis to buy books. This started out in 2007 and I ended up in the Quad Cities to book shop with my friend Jo. I also attended a couple of Friends of the Library Sales in Chicago on … Read more
Online selling using listing services comes with a couple of necessary evils one of which is feedback. I quickly developed a phobia for feedback during my early eBay days after shedding tears over a couple of negatives. Leaving feedback was a tedious chore I avoided until some ebayer who thought the feedback component was the … Read more
The 1st of September heralded the start of my new three year lease. I have been at my current location for four years and am giving this location three years to get its act together. We were rumbling along okay until the train under the road project which commenced last June saw our passing trade … Read more
One of the things I like about being in the bricks and mortar trade is the support the dwindling population of local second hand booksellers offer each other in my region. If a customer can’t find a book in our store we look to see if one is available on line and if it is … Read more
