BookFinder.com Journal

What do you call a group of booksellers?

2009-07-10T09:51:07-07:00

It's Friday, so here is something fun.

Sheppard's Confidential, a really great newsletter for booksellers out of the UK, has taken suggestions for a new collective noun for book dealers. (working off the same concept as a murder of crows or troop of gorillas). They came up with the following:

A whinge of bookdealers (contributed by someone who wishes to remain anonymous!)
A quire of booksellers (C.S. Griffin, DoolinDinghy Books)
A ream of booksellers (C.S. Griffin, DoolinDinghy Books)
A case of bookdealers (Pierce Roche, Dunphail, Moray, Scotland)
A ring of bookdealers (Pierce Roche, Dunphail, Moray, Scotland)
A commission of bookdealers (Pierce Roche, Dunphail, Moray, Scotland)
A mildew of used booksellers? (Ken Brinnick, New Gloucester, ME USA)
A doze of booksellers (John Underwood - judging by the number fall asleep at fairs!)
A shuffle of bookdealers, (Joanne, Proseworthy Collectable Books, Cape Town)
A chapter of bookdealers, (Joanne, Proseworthy Collectable Books, Cape Town)
An eccentricity of bookdealers (Pierce Roche, Dunphail, Moray, Scotland)
A madness of bookdealers (Pierce Roche, Dunphail, Moray, Scotland)
A reduction of bookdealers (Pierce Roche, Dunphail, Moray, Scotland)

At first I was thinking it should be "a shelf of bookdealers" but after reading this "chapter" is definatly the way to go... "a chapter of bookdealers".

Books as a social pursuit

2009-07-08T10:59:38-07:00

It came to my attention that I have been neglecting those of you who who have absolutely no desire to learn about ereaders so today I promise this is the last you will hear about them from me. Today instead I thought I would share two articles about reading and how it can effect your social life.

If you belong to a book club you may be happy to learn that and an an increasing number of authors are jobbing their way around various book clubs to discuss, with their readers, what they thought of the novel. I think it might take away from the whole book club process if you bring the author in right away but after a discussion about the book, getting to actually ask the author questions about the text could be a really neat experience, and a good reason to read and coming authors.

From The Daily Beast:

There is a thing authors do, nervously, when they think no one is looking. They check out their numbers—online sales figures, ratings, rankings, reader reviews. Not long ago, Joshua Henkin, a professor of creative writing at Sarah Lawrence and Brooklyn College, was doing just such a thing in his home office. He was scrolling through Goodreads.com, monitoring the reception of his new novel, Matrimony. A user named Shelley had given him a mixed review—three stars out of five. Henkin clicked on her name and decided to email her, offering to attend her book club, if she had one. She did—that very evening—and, after several exchanges, Henkin was set to call into it.

And then moving from from friends recommending a good book, to books recommending a good friend. LibraryThing.com and the aforementioned Goodreads.com have shown that this works pretty well but The Guardian thinks that relationships based on books should stay at the friend level. The British paper takes a pot shot, in a fairly amusing article, at Boarders launching its dating service for bibliophiles suggesting that looking for love based on reading tastes can only lead to heartache.

Oh, the first couple of dates would go fine: you'd huddle over coffees or beers, discussing with animated, shining eyes your love of, say, Haruki Murakami. Then, as things progress, you might go for a weekend away, perhaps walking hand-in-hand down the narrow streets of Hay-on-Wye. Reclining by a roaring fire in a country pub, something like pride would flutter in your breast as you watch the way your new love's lips move slightly as they read. Then the rot would set in. "You thought Wind-Up Bird Chronicle meant what?" "Actually, I did discover Murakami three years before you." "Yes, but I read Norwegian Wood in the original Japanese …"

And before things started to go publicly, horribly, harrowingly wrong, imagine how dull a couple who were both into the same books would be. You might just about put up with your friend's constant evangelising about Patricia Cornwell, but what if she turned up with a new beau who spouted the same hero-worship? And what if our couple were to take the plunge and move in together? Does any home really need two copies of everything on their bookshelf? Whose editions get sent to the charity shop?

Introducing Ditto, yet another ereader

2009-07-07T09:09:21-07:00

Last Friday I told you about Boarder's launching a new ereader in the UK and today we have yet another reader coming to the fold, The Ditto (or Digital Interface Total Text Organizer).

From the Publishers Weekly report it sounds that The Ditto is much like the Cool-ER reader which debuted at BookExpo this year: costs about the same, has similar features (6" screen, reads txt, pdf and mp3, upgradable memory, etc).

One thing the Ditto does have going for it though is that it supports the epub file format.

As I said on Friday, if some of of this sounds like Greek to you, check out our ebooks FAQ page.

Brit's get new ereader from Borders

2009-07-03T10:12:13-07:00

With the Kindle staying securely put in North America British readers have been complaining about a relative lack of good alternatives to the Sony ereader, with the iLiad device being one of the few other good choices but a hefty price tag to boot.

However I now see in yesterdays Times a review for the new Borders ebook reader, which so far sounds like a good option.

The screen size is the same as that of the Amazon Kindle, but overall the device isn’t as wide. It makes it possible to fit into a large jacket pocket and is easier to hold. Finally, it is a tiny bit cheaper - costing £189, compared with the Sony Reader at £199.

But there’s no love at first sight with the Borders reader. The feel is more matted and plastic than metallic and shiny.

To see and touch the Sony Reader or the Amazon Kindle, is to be attracted to smart and seductive looking devices. You will never desire the Border’s device in the same way. To my mind that is a good thing.

It is just not that special but it doesn’t try to be. It is what is on the inside that counts.

It feels sturdier than its rivals and looks like it can deal with the rough and tumble of travel. It will need to be able to as it does not come in a case.

Since we're book lovers, and gadget nerds, we have put together a little page on BookFinder.com to try and keep you guys up to date on all of the new ereaders, ebook stores, ebook formats, etc. The technology is still in infancy and there are a lot of different formats and readers out there so hopefully this will at least go part of the way to help you figure out which ereader is the one for you.

And for thoes of you who would rather have your hadcover pried from your cold dead hands than read off a screen, never fear our database of over 150 million new, used, rare, and out of print books isnt going anywhere.

The thin line between in and out-of-print

2009-06-26T15:53:36-07:00

Earlier this week the LA Times printed a story about four Martin Luther King Jr. books which are slated to be brought back into print in time for the celebration of what would have been King's 80th birthday (Jan. 18th, 2010).

[Beacon Press] will release new editions of "Stride Toward Freedom," first published in 1958, King's memoir of the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 and 1956; "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?," first published in 1967; "Trumpet of Conscience," first published in 1968; and "Strength to Love," first published in 1963, a volume of his most well-known homilies and the book in the civil rights leader's briefcase when he was killed on April 4, 1968.

This sort of thing happens all the time, books that have been all but forgotten are rejuvenated with a new print run allowing new generations to enjoy them. Most of the time I hardly give this a second thought since it happens so often however this week I have been spending a lot of time looking at books on the verge of the in/out-of print boarder line.

I have been allocating all my spare time to research for the annual BookFinder.com Report - which lists the most sought after out-of-print books in the US, and more often than not these are the books that are right on this line. Last year a number of books on our list were brought back into print due to the surge in popularity and I think we might see a few more this year.

When finished list is always interesting to read but for every book that makes it onto the list there are a number of books which just fail to meet our criteria because they are brought back from the out-of-print abyss just as interest in its out-of-print counterpart starts to increase.

One such book is the autobiography of moonshiner Popcorn Sutton titled Me and my Likker. A local legend in Tennessee as a distiller he wrote the book in 1999 only to have it fall out-of-print for ten years until this past March when Bent Corner Books, a Knoxville bookstore, republished the work after Mr. Sutton's passing. It is still amazingly hard to find, but it is back in print.

If I get the time I might try and compile a blog post with a few more of these near-misses but in the mean time I have to get back to the report.

[Now reading: Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre]

Bibliophibians

2009-06-17T12:30:25-07:00

Something I've been meaning to share for a long time is this Wondermark comic about the role of books.

So, are you a bibliophibian?

Bloomsday and a Canadian book charity

2009-06-16T16:56:39-07:00

Shauna one of my BookFinder.com colleagues found two neat posts on Boing Boing today and I wanted to share them with you.

First. Today is Bloomsday, and if you download this Mp3 you can hear the one and only James Joyce reading from his own Ulysses. If that link dosen't work try this mirror link

Second. If you are living in Canada, more specificly Ontario, there is a Book Drive for Aboriginal Youth happening until the 21st of June which is collecting books to send to isolated communities in Canada's north. Here is the description from the original post:

If you live in Ontario, or want to (quickly!) send some books to a good cause, the Lieutenant Governor of the province is doing his annual drive for new books for kids living in remote First Nations communities. These are generally small, isolated communities located deep in the northern boreal wilderness. Most have a population under 1000 and are accessible only by aircraft. Kids in these communities often have access to only old books in bad condition, so our province's Lieutenant Governor launched this annual effort several years ago to refresh community libraries with up-to-date titles.

The deadline, June 21, is only a few days away, unfortunately. If someone from outside Ontario REALLY wants to help out, feel free to get hold of me directly at dglad@sff.net and you can make arrangements to send a book or two to me, and I'll get it into the donation stream. But for those of you who live in Ontario, or nearby (I'm lookin' at you, folks in northern New York, Michigan, Minnesota, etc.!) this is a great chance to get some new reading material into the hands of kids who really, really need it.

Happy Bloomsday everyone!

Summer reading, don't believe the hype

2009-06-11T11:11:19-07:00

I don't know if you notice to the swath of "summer reading" lists that are posted on every media platform known to man each year around this time? I do, because its my job, and most of them suck. The vast majority of the books on parade sound like a great way to ruin all the good weather and pleasant scenery that mother nature could muster on even the best summer afternoon.

Just because it's summer does not mean you have to read crap. Reading this Esquire article, I am not alone in my views. The columnist took one for the team and actually sat down to read Dean Koontz, Harlan Coben and David Baldacci - so we wouldn't have to. Here is his take:

Stupid books take almost as long to read as not-so-stupid books. The chapters are short, the dialogue is "snappy," and still things go on forever. There's a reason only very special episodes of CSI stretch past the hour mark. These books are interminable — imagine a poorly produced thriller starring Tim Allen or Jim Belushi that lasts something like 12 to 15 hours.

This is the point where I'm supposed to find something positive to say about these books. That's how it works. You're supposed to get all counterintuitive and say that Sarah Palin is so freakishly stupid, she's actually some kind of genius. Here's what I can say: The Coben is not quite as bad as the Baldacci, which is not as god-awful as the Koontz.

It seems it's widely considered bad form to call stupid things stupid. But that's mostly what these books are. They'll cost you $25 a pop, waste a half day of your life, and leave you neither smarter nor happier, just kind of bored and a little depressed. That's no way to spend a summer. Screw these books. Take a walk.

I like a walk as much as the next guy but I also like reading in a hammock. So I want to ask, what is the best book you have read so far this summer? Maybe we can collect some comments and post a list of books that you may actually WANT to read this summer.

New uses for card catalogs

2009-06-08T11:11:32-07:00

I always wondered what happened to all the card catalogs once libraries went digital... I'm glad they are still being put to good use.

Here is a neat blog with photo's of card catalogs in peoples homes...

Indigo to launch Canadian eReader

2009-06-04T10:23:16-07:00

In what seems to be a daily event these days news of yet another eReader is on the horizon. Chapters Indigo are apparently in talks with manufacturers and are working out who will make their own version of the product.

CTVs Tech Life Blog explains...

...according to the company's founder and CEO Heather Reisman who appeared on Canada AM this morning for her annual summer reads selection... she divulged the company's plans, willing only to confirm that it won't be the Sony Reader, already available and supported by Sony's own online E-Book store, nor Amazons Kindle which has yet to find a launch in Canada.

Instead the retailer will launch their own service, one that will follow on the heels of their successful ShortCovers service, launched earlier this year. ShortCovers is a mobile app, currently available as a free download for the iPhone 3G, iPod Touch through Apple's Apps Store, the latest generation of BlackBerry devices through RIM's App World, and for Android-powered devices including the HTC Dream and HTC Magic which launched today, through the Android Market.

The pen is mightier

2009-06-03T09:15:41-07:00

or at least this one is (Via BookNinja)

Manga ruled as child pornography by US Court

2009-05-28T12:34:13-07:00

I just had this io9 article sent to me which revolves around a literary censorship issue that has erupted.

A prolific collector of various types of manga in Iowa faces 15 years in prison because some of the books in his collection appeared to depict minors engaged in sexual acts.

From a Wired article on the case:

Christopher Handley, described by his lawyer as a “prolific collector” of manga, pleaded guilty last week to mailing obscene matter, and to “possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children.” Three other counts were dropped in a plea deal with prosecutors.

The 39-year-old office worker was charged under the 2003 Protect Act, which outlaws cartoons, drawings, sculptures or paintings depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, and which lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Handley’s guilty plea makes him the first to be convicted under that law for possessing cartoon art, without any evidence that he also collected or viewed genuine child pornography. He faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison

It's a case to keep an eye on, especially if you happen to own the collected works of Nabokov

Yes you can, be a part of Obama's new book

2009-05-21T11:05:00-07:00

Sometimes the future comes sooner than you think, Print on demand is entering the mainstream. It was just last week when I wrote about authors personalizing POD novels as a marketing tactic and how it could help bring print on demand into mainstream aplication.

This week brings the anouncement of The Obama Time Capsule, a custom, 200 page, print on demand picture book which allows the customer to incorporate their own images and text into the body of the work.

According to this USA Today article, when you order the book you are given 10 days to customize it to your liking.

After ordering the book at Amazon, you'll receive an e-mail with a link that takes you to the Time Capsule website. You'll have 10 days to customize the book there or it will get shipped as is. You get to write a dedication, and your name appears on the cover (and an inside page) as one of the authors, next to Smolan and co-project director Jennifer Erwitt.

You can upload one image to appear on the back cover and another that will appear on a page next to pictures of Sean Penn, George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities. There's also a place-holder for your kid's Obama-related artwork.

At this point the personalization is pretty basic, but I see the options in the future as nearly limitless.

Imagine a kiosk outside the Superbowl where after you have watched the game you can upload your personal photos from your digital camera and mix them in with pro shots taken by photographers that day at the game and have a finished book mailed to you a week later.... Or better yet, have something like the Espresso Book Machine on hand and print the copy right there so you have something to look over while you fight your way out of the parking lot.

Publishers Weekly made the announcement earlier this week that the number of Print on Demand titles on offer overtook the number of titles published in the traditional way last year. The vast (and I mean VAST) majority of these POD titles were super short run books on the extreme end of the long tail, but with the creators of The Obama Time Capsule alerady boasting that they might have the first NY Times bestselling POD in history, its becoming harder to deny that POD really is hitting the mainstream whether we like it or not.

FLEPia the full color eBook reader

2009-05-20T15:55:16-07:00

I'm working on some research about eBooks for a BookFinder.com info page that we will be posting later on to help you guys muddle your way though all the different readers and file types. While doing this I came across a neat video that I thought you might want to see.

It's for the FLEPia, Fujitsu's new full color eReader that was launched last month in Japan. It seems to have some pretty major drawbacks, such as the $1000 price tag and the 1.8-8 second page load times. If you can get past the ultra cheesy music, monotone dialogue and glaring camera work the device itself is a pretty monster step in the right direction for eReaders.

Have you ever had one of these days...

2009-05-20T11:07:44-07:00

I just saw this on the Book Bench blog and it struck me funny, hope you enjoy it too.

Good afternoon. This is your pre-boarding announcement for Flight 505 to Milwaukee. All first-class and business-class passengers, passengers needing special assistance, and families travelling with small children may now board the aircraft.

We also invite any Platinum Club, ProTravel Select, Apogee Plus, and Sigma Alliance cardholders to board at this time.

Thank you for waiting. We now welcome members of Skyline Advantage, Priority Partners, Front Row Preferred, Exclusa, Summit V.I.P., Head of the Line, A-List Connections, Imperial Privilege, InCrOwD, Icarus Prime Choice, Top Rank Silk, and Top Rank Crystal Reserve. You may now board the aircraft.

We appreciate your patience. We now welcome members of Focus^One, Altius PremierPlan, Silver Platter, Jet Pack Invicta, Above and Beyond, Screaming Eagle, Canadians of Distinction, e-Go Trip, Express Wishes, Superba/FasTTraKK, Freedom Rider Élite, ¡Por Supuesto!, The Circle of Enchantment, Hegira, Hegira Mach Five, Wanderlu$t, Godhead Supreme, Godhead Burnt Offerings, Qomfort Qlub, MeFirst, MeFirst Deluxe Rewards, Out of My Way, and VelourPass. You may now board the aircraft.

The rest of you? Beat it.

Print on Demand offers new possibilities

2009-05-13T11:27:13-07:00

Print on demand technology is getting better and better by the day, and while it evokes the ire of book collectors, POD has opened a lot of doors.

The most commonly realized beneficiaries are academics and graduate students who are now more easily able to order affordable copies of highly specialized reports and research projects. The other groups to benefit are emerging novelists and poets who can offer their work to a large number of readers for a limited financial investment giving them a chance to build up their fan base potentially increasing their chances of picking up a publisher.

However one aspect of print on demand which I think is still in its relative infancy is the use of POD technology as a marketing tool for mainstream publishing.

I got thinking about this while reading my morning blogroll and seeing that romance novelist Brenda Novak is setting up an online charity auction for diabetes research where the winning bidder will be flown to a romance convention, have her photo taken with a cover model and get 10 copies of the book with "her" cover.

Another scheme that has been hatched as of late is authors auctioning or raffling off the chance to name a character in their novel. Stephen King, Amy Tan, Lemony Snicket, John Grisham, and Margaret Atwood have all done this for charity and today I read in Quill and Quire that Nathan Tyree (The author of Zombie Lust and the New Flesh and How to Make Love Like a Zombie) is taking this one step further and actually writing "you" into his next book, and he's pocketing the money.

The winner will have to provide me with their name, a photo of themselves, a description of their personality and mannerisms, a bio (background info and such). I will write the novel and guarantee publication within one year of the end of the auction. Then they will also receive a free copy of the book.

So my question is how long will it be before we see this kind of marketing translated into POD.

Just say a regular copy of the new Stephen King book will cost you $15, but for $35 you can have the personalized copy where your name is substituted in place for that of the beat cop who catches the telekinetic werewolf serial killer goes for $30. The same could be done with Novak’s cover scheme, have a premium option with a personalized cover. Depending on the author, I could see it being popular.

[Now reading: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley]

Worst mothers in literature

2009-05-04T15:20:09-07:00

If there is one person who personifies selflessness, un-wavering love and caring the first to come to mind should be your mother. She cradled you for your fist nine months and held your hand though all the challenges life could throw at you. Like with all true heroes books are littered with examples of hundreds of miracle moms from the classic Hester Prynne in the Scarlet Letter, who taught her daughter it's not shameful to have pride in ones self, to the more contemporary Mrs. Weasley the super poor super mom who took in Harry Potter like he was her own son.

However not all the mother's in literature come out smelling like roses. Abandonment, abuse, and adultery are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the bottom of the barrel of fictional mothers. To help you forget that time your mom forgot your birthday BookFinder.com has compiled a list of the 10 worst mothers in fiction.

The 10 worst mothers in Literature

10. Jeanettes Mother from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

The main character is a young girl named Jeanette, who is adopted into a fundamentalist religious community. As Jeanette grows up she discovers that she is a lesbian and finds love and happiness with another local girl. When her psychotic mother finds out she publicly condemns the girl in front of their church/town and proceeds to tie the girl down and attempt two lengthy exorcisms, one via a 14 hour beating and another 36 hours locked in a parlor without food.

9. Sarah from Little Children by Tom Perrotta

Sarah joins the ranks of the litany of literary mothers who neglect their children to focus the self gratification of an affair. While defiantly not the only woman in literature to commit this motherly sin she is getting singled out, I can only have ten on the list.

8. Gertrude from Hamlet by Shakespeare

The fact that she marries her brother in law, who killed her husband, is proof that she's nuts but what really makes Gertrude a certifiable psycho is that despite all the adultery and killing she tries a little too hard to show compassion to Hamlet giving the kid a serious Oedipus complex.

7. Jocasta from Oedipus the King by Sophocles

Speaking of Oedipus... Everyone in this story is too stupid and selfish for words and Jocasta is no exception. Too proud to kill her child to protect her kingdom, too stupid to not sleep with someone who is half her age when the gods have proclaimed she will commit incest, and soulless enough not to track down who killed her husband; she and the rest of her family are the perfect pawns to entertain the Greek gods.

6. Sophie Portnoy from Portnoy`s Complaint by Philip Roth

Alexander Portnoy is a deranged neurotic mess who, unable to enjoy sex, continues to seek release with more bizarre and deviant acts. To Find the root of Alexander's issues one doesn’t have to look to far beyond his smothering, flirting, fussing mother who wouldn’t even let him use the bathroom without overseeing what he had accomplished.

5. The mother/stepmother in Hansel and Gretel by Brothers Grimm

She convinces her woodcutter husband to leave their kids out in the forest to die. The children display intelligence and cunning to make it back to the house when the woman gets her husband to trudge them off even deeper into the forest. Child labor would even have been a more motherly option, and it was practically fashionable in the 19^th century. Abandonment = bad mothering, at least she snuffs it in the end.

4. Norma Bates from Psycho by Robert Bloch

While most of her emotional abuse and tirades about the evils of women and sex go on behind the scenes in this novel, the emotionally crippled murderous fruits of her labor take center stage. Norma Bates defines the role of the psychotic mother in fiction

3. Margaret White from Carrie by Stephen King

Mother of Carrie White, Margaret was religious fanatic who believed nearly everything was sin and became physically and emotionally abusive to her daughter in an effort to get her to conform to her devout lifestyle, usually by locking her in a closet until she prayed for forgiveness. That kind of mother would send anyone into a telekinetic fury.

2. Petal from The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

She leaves her husband shortly after his parents commit suicide and runs off with her lover, but not before selling her daughters to a black market adoption agency... her only redeeming quality is that she gets killed off in a car crash so early in the book.

1. Corinne Dollanganger from Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews

After Marrying her father’s half-brother Corinne Dollanganger is widowed, and forced to return to her estranged family home with her four children. Her mother agrees to let her move back in on the condition that Corinne hides the (illegitimate) children from Malcolm, her husband and Corinne’s father, until he dies. Instead of working it out on her own she stuffs the children into an attic for years where they are generally ignored and become malnourished, delusional, incestuous and develop every social abnormality in the book. Oh yeah she also tries to kill them off.

Honourable mention goes to Viviane Joan from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

Viviane (Vivi) really is a good mother but vanity gets the best of her when she sees an interview with her daughter (Siddalee) in Time magazine where Siddalee expresses her opinions of an unhappy childhood. Vivi proceeds to act like a four year old and goes berserk and launching a war against her daughter, refusing to talk to her and even taking down family photos.... way to suck it up and control the ol ego for the family Vivi. Vivi would make this list except that by the end of the story both her and her daughter once again see eye to eye and really Vivi is just guilty of caring too much.

Edgar Awards winners

2009-05-01T09:15:45-07:00

The 2009 Edgar Awards, which are given to the best mystery and crime stories of the year, were presented last night in New York. Here were the winners in the main book categories

Best Novel:
Blue Heaven by C.J. Box

Best First Novel by an American Author:
The Foreigner by Francie Lin

Best Paperback Original
China Lake by Meg Gardiner

You can see the rest of the winners and the nominees at the Edgar's Website

I'm happy to see Meg Gardiner picking up an award here, I've read two of her books, China Lake and Crosscut, and both of them were quite good. She's an American ex-pat living in England who has published a number of books in the UK but only "recently" got American distro when Stephen King read one of her galleys and plugged her as a crime prodigy in his Entertainment Weekly column. (By recently I mean about a year and a half ago).

How to repair old books

2009-04-29T10:42:58-07:00

I was reading though For The Love Of Books (the Blog for Biblio) the other day and they had a great article on cleaning and repairing ex-library books. Which, as they mention, is a great skill to have when you find books that are neat or interesting but don't necessarily have a great monetary value. The day I find an ex-library Hemingway first I’m taking it straight to a specialist but in the mean time I shall pay heed to these valuable tips:

Never forget that the more effective the cleaner, the more abrasive it can be, and the wearier the book, the more it must be spared abrasive cleaning methods. Start with the usual soft cloth, then move on as needed to the Artgum eraser and other famous brand names in the field.

If you're determined to remove a library pocket, you can try such products as un-du Label and Tape Remover, followed by a minute or two of low heat from a hairdryer. The multipurpose Document Cleaning Pad can help in removing residue.

Rehabilitate enough library books, and you'll become intimately acquainted with rubber cement. To cope with its removal, try a long-lasting crepe rubber eraser called Pik-Up, which works on many other adhesives, too.

Then they go on to describe some products and tricks for restoring dust jackets...

If you want more information on book care AbeBooks has an interview with Brodart Book Supplies and Littera Scripta also has a pretty good summary on book care.

If any of our readers have done any book restorations themselves and have before and after photos I would be most interested in seeing what an armature restoration job can accomplish.

(edit) - The book Helen suggested, in her comment below, is Book Repair for Booksellers by J. Godsey, in case any of you were looking for it.

[Now reading: Enders Game by Orson Scott Card]

Little Blue Books and Emanuel Haldeman-Julius

2009-04-24T15:10:01-07:00

I just received a neat email from Jason, one of our blog readers, about his website where he discusses the Little Blue Books series which was published by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius and his son Henry J. Haldeman. Its quite a good page and provides a lot of neat information.

Haldeman was a newspaper man who wished to publish small low priced paperback books for the working class. The books were to be cheap and small enough to fit into ones pocket (~3.5"x5"). In 1919 he purchased Appeal to Reason publishing and raised his start up capital by by appealing to the companies 175, 000 person subscriber list asking them to pledge $5 each to receive 50 future publications. 5000 of the readers took him up on the offer and he was in business.

Over the course of the companies existence (1919-1978) the Halderman's printed thousands of editions amounting to hundreds of millions of copies. The Little Blue Books was just one of several different series the Haldemans produced, others included: The Appeal's Pocket Series, People's Pocket Series, Appeal Pocket Series, Ten Cent Pocket Series, Five Cent Pocket Series and the Pocket Series.

I find this type of publication fascinating. They became desirable because they were cheaply produced and therefore were well within the price range of the working class. Because they were cheap they were used, abused, and discarded which is what has made them collectible. This same phenomenon occurred with Victorian era Yellow Backs as well as the 1920s-50s pulp paperbacks... I'm sure there are more these are just the first two that came to my head.

Yellow-backs Little Blue Books Pulp Novels

This is also a great type of book for a beginner collector because even with moderate means one can begin to put together a very nice collection without spending a mint (although it is still easy to get carried away).

If you want a more in depth review on Halderman and Little Blue Books I recommend Jason's website, it has lots of really good information, or search for Little Blue Books on BookFinder.com

[Now reading: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga]

Used books can green your reading

2009-04-20T13:11:15-07:00

It is Earth Week this week, and while we should always be working on reducing our environmental impact one should take special consideration this week in particular.

In grade school they started teaching us about environmentalism with the concept of the three R's: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. (A campaign which made much more grammatical sense to my young mind than the previous three R's I was told to endorse: Reading, (W)riting, and (A)rithmatic). The idea behind it being that first you reduce your consumption, then reuse items when you cannot reduce, and lastly when the item is no longer of use to you or anyone else you know, recycle it so that it may be turned into something of use once more.

All of us at BookFinder.com do a lot of reading and so we wanted to take a look at what kind of environmental impact our hobby and our industry have on the environment. I take a lot of joy from reading and out of all my activities that are potential harm to the earth it is one of the last that I will cut back on so I was happy to find that I was already doing a small part by mostly reading used books.

We found that the creation of every book produces 8.85lbs of carbon dioxide, and that shipping a book 2,123 miles (or 3,417 Km) by media mail only produces about 1.7lbs of C02 (ie: San Francisco to Chicago). So even when shipping a used book across North America you are still producing less carbon than if you had bought a new book in your own town.

There are times when I have to buy a book new, sometimes I just can't wait to read a new authors work, or when I was in school I could not always find the textbooks I wanted used; but with used books being both better for the environment and easier on your pocketbook I think it is an easy decision to make.

So get into earth week and read a used book!

You can read our full report, search for used books, and learn to green your reading with used books here

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout wins Pulitzer Prize for fiction

2009-04-20T12:34:06-07:00

I suppose I was half correct with my Pulitzer guess on Friday.... Updike didn't win but one of the outsiders did.

Elizabeth Strout's collection of 13 tales about a retired schoolteacher named Olive Kitteridge has taken top spot as the Pulitzer Prize winner in the fiction category.

Also nominated in the category were The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich and All Souls by Christine Schutt.

Pulitzer Prize for fiction winner?

2009-04-17T13:59:24-07:00

The Pulitzer prizes are being awarded next week.... and unlike most awards the prize committee dose not issue a shortlist in advance of the awards. The beauty of this system is that it leaves us open to speculate rampantly.

Enter PPrize.com who have crunched some numbers to predict who might win the fiction prize.

Here are their top 15 predictions listed in order of probability.

1. "Home" by Marilynne Robinson
2. "The Widows of Eastwick" by John Updike
3. "Indignation" by Philip Roth
4. "The Lazarus Project" by Aleksandar Hemon
5. "Fine Just the Way It Is" by Annie Proulx
6. "The Plague of Doves" by Louise Erdrich
7. "A Mercy" by Toni Morrison
8. "Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri
9. "Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout
10. "Dangerous Laughter" by Steven Millhauser
11. "Telex from Cuba" by Rachel Kushner
12. "Netherland" by Joseph O'Neill
13. "My Sister, My Love" by Joyce Carol Oates
14. "Lush Life" by Richard Price
15. "Our Story Begins" by Tobias Wolff

I think if I had to make a guess today, I would choose "The Widows of Eastwick" by John Updike to win this year's prize. However the dark horse often wins in literary races. Who do you think is going to win the Pulitzer for fiction? I'll post the winner on Monday.

[Edit - The Winner has been announced]

Banned Books

2009-04-16T14:15:28-07:00

The American Library Association (ALA) has published its list of the most challenged books of 2008. Top spot was once again taken by "And Tango Makes Three" the award winning children's book about two male penguins who become parents however Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner (which was challenged because of the books rape scene), Philip Pullman's "Dark Materials" trilogy (for being violent and anti-religious), Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" (drugs, suicide, language) and a myriad of other titles were also heavily challenged.

The ALA explained that in total there were 513 challenges last year, which resulted in books being pulled from library shelves 74 times. The ALA defines a challenge as a "formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness."

I think we have covered this topic on many occasions here at the BookFinder.com Journal so I will keep this brief but I am constantly amazed that complaints are being filed about books like Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, and picture books about pengins. Parents should have a keen interest in what their children read, and as such help guide them to make good decisions. But I think libraries should be free of censorship and screening and even though only 74 books were removed from the shelves of libraries that was still about 1 for every 7 complaints.

It makes me wonder if the people complaining about these books shout as loudly about the violence on TV (even in the news), sexuality in advertizements and course language in music...

Full list Via The Guardian

Recomended retail price of books

2009-04-16T11:09:13-07:00

The Bookseller has been reporting that Bloomsbury has removed the recommended retail price from several of its backlist titles, causing a small uproar among indie booksellers who are afraid that in removing the cover price customers will think they are being overcharged by the bookstore. Because lets face it books can be expensive, and the look even more expensive when the supermarket down the street sells the same book at a deep discount to lure customers in to buy cheese.

Booksellers interviewed in the article explain that the cover price is their last wall of defense when explaining to a customer that their shop is not over charging but that they simply cannot afford to discount as deeply as a chain store because they order less books and receive a smaller discount. For this I feel for the booksellers.

However I also feel for the publishers. Books in the mid to backlist can sit for months (years?) before a print run completely sells and publishers say that the costs they face over the lifespan of the edition vary too dramatically to continue posting cover prices. With inflation projected to increase due to stimulus spending and currency's fluctuating several percent in a month I cannot really blame them for not printing these increasingly variable prices on the jacket covers.

Living in Canada cover prices have been an incredibly sore spot for decades now because we see both the Canadian and US prices listed on our books and it never matches the exchange rate. At times I have paid 20-30% more than Americans for books even after exchange as been taken into account, and it can be a bitter pill to swallow. At at time last year the Canadian dollar ended up being worth more than the greenback which forced publishers and retailers to sell books in Canada at the US cover price. These dramatic swings give good reason to eliminate the cover price.

I wonder what percentage of customers realize when an item is being priced as a loss leader, and when it is just a differentiation of markup.

In this whole PR battle it will be interesting to see who ends up facing customer complaints over price, and if any other publishers follow Bloomsburys action. What do you think? Let us know if your a bookseller or a customer and tell us if you think this matters?