The BookThinker Newsletter ISSN 1547-9501 138, 21 September 2009

#138 Update, 26 October 2009       BookThink's Top 10 on eBay August 2009 Keeping up with what sells for the highest prices on eBay is always interesting. But in August, the winner in the Antiquarian & Collectible category had an unusual wow factor. Though book related, it wasn't a book at all. The rest of that list included Moby Dick wedged between 4 volumes of the 1853 American Flora ... and Helmut Newton's Sumo. If you read Hebrew, be sure to see #5 in the Antiquarian & Collectible list. In the Fiction Top 10, a US seller placed 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 10th with Stephen King titles. The non-fiction list ranged from Julia Child to Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama. #138, Special Report 2, 5 October 2009 Special Announcements       Bookselling in the 21st Century Part IV: Identifying Books That Need to Be Liquidated Immediately No doubt many of you have already lowered prices some in an attempt to ride out what we're now calling the Great Recession, and I believe that this is a necessary strategy for many of us. But I also believe that, as we work our way into the digital era, at least some print books have already or will soon become near impossible to sell to anybody for any amount. What this suggests to me is that, while lowering prices on one's books generally will boost sales in the near future, something more dramatic may need to happen to at least a portion of our inventories. There are some books that will need to be liquidated as soon as possible - and in almost all cases these fall under the umbrella of commodity books, those purchased for content, as opposed to antiquarian (or collected) books. #138, Special Report 1, 28 September 2009 Special Announcements BookThink's Author Series Nevada Barr Revisited Recently BookThink's Media Editor Catherine Petruccione visited with bestselling author Nevada Barr at her home in New Orleans, and the timing couldn't have been better: Look for Barr's new novel, 13-1/2, on September 29 and her appearance in filmmaker Ken Burn's National Park series, scheduled to begin airing this evening. Cathy's interview with her follows. From the Editor     Bookselling in the 21st Century Part III: If You Learn How to Do Nothing Else ... What this series didn't address was the nuts and bolts of book photography. As noted above, there are many online tutorials on photography that do, but the ones I've seen don't address specific issues associated with photographing books and in many cases lack the detail necessary to get photographers up to speed quickly. Moreover, they're especially weak in what I consider to be a vital part of the photographic process - image editing. Beginning this month, a new Gold Edition series will take up where the first series left off. Top 10 on eBay July 2008 Next up is Pamela Palmer's Top 10 on eBay. The big news in the July top 10 fiction front was the sale of several science fiction and fantasy books. Venerable names such as Lovecraft, Heinlein, Herbert, and Arkham House were joined on the list by Edding's Polgara the Sorceress and Meyer's Twilight to fill half the list. In the area of non-fiction, Helmut Newton, Michael Jackson, and Muhammad Ali titles were interspersed with such works as Karakoram and Western Himalaya 1909 ..., the 2000 Hiroshi Sugimoto: Theatres limited edition, and a 1835 book on regency furniture. Continuing the best offer and BIN trend, only half the non-fiction list was purchased at auction.

Recent BookThinker Issues

The BookThinker Newsletter
137 Special Report 1
7 September 2009

Special Announcements

Letters to the Editor From David Greif Response from Karin Bergsagel After publishing our interview with Alibris CEO Brian Elliott several weeks ago, bookseller David Greif wrote me a detailed response expressing his disagreement with a forum letter we had published along with the interview - written, you may recall, by BookThink's News Editor Karin Bergsagel. Since David's letter was primarily a response to Karin's thoughts, I asked Karin if she would respond to David's letter, and the result follows.

BookThink's Author Profiles An Interview with Lizzie Skurnick Also today, Media Editor Catherine Petruccione is back with an in-depth interview with author Lizzie Skurnick, whose recently published book, Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, is a celebration of authors she and other women loved in their formative years. I think you'll find this interview especially informative about what's actually going on with young readers today and why - and what impact this may have on the future of bookselling.