A heart-warming love letter to books and bookshops, by an amenable fellow turned antisocial old misanthrope“I was in here two years ago and you had a book by Roger Penrose. Do you know what happened to it?” Shaun Bythell – owner of the Book Shop in Wigtown, Galloway – has 100,000 books in stock, sells 20,000 a year, and has handled nearly 1m second-hand books since he bought the shop in 2001. Unsurprisingly, the Roger Penrose volume had not stuck in his mind.Before he entered the book trade at the tender age of 31, he was “amenable and friendly”. Now, after many years of fielding bizarre questions, constant haggling over prices (why is it “acceptable to try to screw the profit out of struggling small businesses” but not supermarkets?), and struggling to survive despite Amazon’s “icy grip” on bookselling, he has been forced to embrace the stereotype of the “impatient, intolerant, antisocial proprietor”. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2019-08-24 10:58:38 UTC ]
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A tightly focused strategy on maintaining margins has enabled WHSmith to persist after than two centuries at the heart of UK bookselling, inspiring admiration and ire alike. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-01-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The annual search to find the best publishers, retailers, agents, librarians and supply... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-01-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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This month's starred BlueInk reviews offers a look at some of the best literature the self-publishing community has to offer. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-01-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Booksellers’ post-Christmas sales are well underway, with retailers offering discounts of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-12-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Haynes Publishing Group has reported a 2% drop in overall group revenue in the second quarter of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-12-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Booksellers have warned there is no room for a repeat of last year's Yodel pre-Christmas... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-12-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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#mixed reviews
For the past decade the American Booksellers Association has been warning about the need for succession plans and the graying of booksellers. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-12-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A ruling on John Wiley & Sons Inc. v. Kirtsaeng – a case expected to come before the Supreme Court early next year – could make it illegal for non-profits and businesses to resell copyrighted works produced abroad. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-12-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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British bookshop Foyles and The Bookseller have partnered to help crowdsource ideas for making Foyles's new flagship store fit for the 21st Century. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2012-12-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Booksellers across the UK have put up signs in their windows reading 'We pay our taxes' in response to a hearing by the Public Accounts Committee on Amazon's business practices. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-11-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jeff Kinney's seventh Diary of a Wimpy Kid novel, The Third Wheel (Puffin), has become one of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-11-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Thinking about how to give the next generation a step up, four young booksellers started the Emerging Leaders Project in 2006 with the support of the American Booksellers Association. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-11-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Tim Godfray, chief executive of the Booksellers Association, has backed the stance taken by House... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-11-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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This month's starred reviews of self-published books includes a SF mystery set in dystopia where people live in domed cities and a memoir of Mexican immigration to the US. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2012-11-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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First Barnes & Noble, then Indigo Books and Music and Books-A-Million – now some indie bookstores are choosing not to add Amazon-published titles to their bookshelves. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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More Info Hands-on with Kobo's Glo and Mini e-readers (video) Kobo Glo review: another illuminated e-reader lights up the market Amazon Kindle Paperwhite review While tablet and smartphone manufacturers battled it out over screen sizes, e-reader makers seem to have settled on an... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2012-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Members of the public have voted Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Technology Review has relaunched itself as MIT Technology Review, completing a digital-first transformation worthy of its cutting-edge namesake. Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2012-10-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facing financial and other pressures, the Canadian Booksellers Association voted October 18 to become a division of the Retail Council of Canada, which CBA has been affiliated with since 2009. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-10-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Some 20 weeks before Newsweek set the media into a frenzy with its announcement of a digital-first publishing strategy, Jason Pontin was already grappling with how to move his 113-year-old publication toward a digital future. Pontin announced in June that MIT's Technology Review magazine would... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2012-10-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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