Small Retailers: On the back of last weeks announcement that Coliseum Books was to close the AP published two reports on independent retailing. There are success stories in independent book retailing but the market is very difficult and the retailer has to be very creative in not relying on the books to produce an income. One of the retailers mentioned in the following articles refers to being 'fractional' in how he approaches his market. Basically, a little bit here a little bit there and it all adds up. Genre Booksellers and Independent Booksellers as reported by the Associated Press.
Personal Libraries: I wrote last week about libraries, but here is a far more lucid reflection by author Alberto Manguel, excerpted from The Library at Night by Knopf.
I spent some misguided time over the past few weeks looking for new links and came across a few new sites. Here is a sample:
Fifth Estate is the child of the authors and editors at Press Books. I came across the site this week and am impressed with their blogs/articles and will visit frequently. There is a link to the right of my blog. Here is a recent post about bookfinder.com.
Book Info.net has all kinds of interesting articles from someone named Tomasina. It was this recent article on the amount of new titles to be released over the next several weeks that drew me in originally. I am not sure I agree with some who think we will be overburdened by choice. For the most part, the books are purchased and are read in the less fertile periods of the year. Buzz, Balls and Hype had a similar post penned by Jason Pinter discussing the same thing. Also, if you scroll down the home page you will see they are running a 'contest' to see what the best tie-in or cross promotion idea is. This came from an earlier post about Mitch Albom's book on sale at Starbucks.
Another publisher web site I have started looking at is Elephant Walk by Overlook Press. (Overlook is the home of Peter Mayer who was at Penguin UK for many years). They are publishing a book purported to be a history of the Funerary Violin. No one is quite sure if this book is a fake or not. Overlook are Mum: here.
More next week.
2 comments:
I’m a first time visitor; I like what you’ve got going on and intend to return; just thought I’d leave a fingerprint.
You're very kind! I aspire to be interesting, or at least, not boring. I'm so happy to know about your site, and the perspectives you offer. I've had great fun going through it so far.
And yes, my parents did saddle me with a beast of a name, didn't they?
(Mixed metaphors.)
Thanks again,
Thomasina
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