The 1970s, the decade of terror! If science didn’t kill you, sex would. Take a tour tour through the “me decade” with a representative book cover from each year.
I recently had a return due to my error in the listing. I had it listed as a ‘signed’ copy and it wasn’t. My error and I own up to it. What to do next…
I haven’t done a little Link Luv post in a while. Here are a few websites that I’ve enjoyed. As always, if you have some of your own suggestions please add them below and we’ll try and add them next time. Bookmarks: Toronto’s newest used bookstore, and more | Quill & Quire Here’s a link … Read more
The problem with free clipart is its free. It means it gets used by everybody and all blends together. If you’re getting ready for a big advertising push in the downmarket, it is probably worth your time to actually commission your own one-of-a-kind artwork. It’s hard to establish a distinct presense if you look like everybody else. So here’s some guidelines for how to commission art for your bookstore.
We all know that we need to advertise, and we all know that it’s very difficult to know how and where to advertise. It tends to be expensive, and so often it doesn’t work. We know that people aren’t going to come to our book store if they don’t know we are there.
I’ve given this a lot of thought.
In my previous piece – ‘The Second Renaissance’ – I wrote about the internet and how it is changing communication and attitudes. It would seem that the internet is a good place to advertise. Websites are neither difficult nor expensive to set up and maintain. The downside is that there are, literally, billions of websites so the book buyers aren’t likely to find your website unless they already know about it.
We also know that book people – and especially used book people – like to visit as many stores as they can, because, unlike B&N or Chapters, every one of our stores is different. So I thought it would make sense to have a lot of used bookshops on one site. Actually, it would be best if ALL the used bookstores were on one site, searchable by location. If that were the case, anyone going for a drive, or moving, or visiting another city, could go to the site and find out what bookstores there were in the area, their hours, location, number of books, etc.
This is a guest post by a great friend of the Bookshop Blog – Paul Young. Paul runs Prying1 Books please take a moment a pay a visit to his site. One thing I have discovered in the short time I’ve been selling books online is that a bit of research pays off in the … Read more
With so many transactions happening on the internet, it has become increasingly important to pay attention when buying, to track your purchases, and to monitor your credit card bills, debit card transactions, etc. There are so many scams going on out there that I wouldn’t bother to write about any particular one, except that … Read more
What is a book worth?
What is the value of a book? Maybe in this instance it might be best to ask – how am I defining value.
Worth to an individual ? Absolute intrinsic value of the paper and ink? Hard to say.
Part of what a book’s worth makes me glad to be a bookseller because I look at books and realize the value of particular books to me and realize that I have walked this way and now others coming into my little book store are walking similar ways.
When I was a very young man (still in high school), I read a book in our high school library written by one Rene Descartes in which Descartes postulated the incredible idea that at some point in our lives we should place into doubt everything that we know and seek to prove to ourselves that the things which we believe are correct and true.
This hit me like a piano dropped on my head and made me start to think about why I believed all the things I believed. A fantastic idea – and it came from a book.
Growing older I now compare it to the feeling Keats must have felt upon first reading Chapman’s Homer.
This was an epiphany.
