The Summer 2016 issue of The Standard features several pieces on the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS), including an essay on the IOBA scholarship program, and accounts from three IOBA Scholarship attendees of the 2016 seminar. Rounding out the issue is a piece on book fairs by Jonathan Smalter, and a fluff piece (literally!) profiling Blake, shop cat at Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company. Paul Shelley of Churchill Book Collector attended the seminar as an I

Welcome to the Spring 2016 issue of The Standard, the journal of the Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA). One month ago, incoming IOBA President Joan White approached me about taking over as Editor, and re-booting The Standard. The journal was always intended to be a quarterly publication, not that one could tell based on the five issues published in the last six years. I was guest editor of the Summer 2013 issue (the last before the recent, lengthy hiatus) and

The theme of this issue of The Standard is perhaps somewhat counter-intuitive for the journal of the Independent Online Booksellers Association: real world bookselling opportunities for the online dealer. IOBA President Chris Volk sets the stage as she explains how the reports of the death of the book have been greatly exaggerated. Next is a pair of articles that explore real world bookselling at book fairs and at antique malls, with contributions from several of your IOBA co

Less than three weeks after assuming the position of Editor, I am pleased to present the first issue of The Standard for 2013, and to rededicate it as the voice of IOBA. This is meant in a dual sense: as our “house organ,” The Standard serves to represent our organization’s values, goals and concerns; but more than that, it should also provide an outlet for individual IOBA members to share their experience and knowledge with both colleagues and interested readers. Part of wha

Welcome to the first all-new issue of The Standard in nearly three years. As I mentioned in our previous issue, The Standard, for a variety of reasons, was on an unfortunate and extended hiatus. But no more. For this Fall issue we present articles we hope will be useful and interesting to the membership, as well as to other booksellers and bibliophiles. From dealer discounts to African bookstores, book reviews to member profiles, business concept to business titans, our hope

With this issue, I happily and proudly assume the editorship of the IOBA’s (long neglected) Standard. And with our first new installment in more than two years, we also begin the tenth volume of The Standard, one that unveils what I hope will be only the beginning of many improvements to our august publication. But as with many things, before we can go forward, it helps to look back. In the last two years, the IOBA has matured. Where in years past our membership directory did

The Standard usually comes out on the first of January, April, July, and October, but here we are dropping the Fall issue down your chimneys in the last week of December. We are doing two things with this slimmer special issue. One is pretty obvious—catching up on getting our online journal out on time. Shouldn’t be long now before that happens. We are also taking a very close look at the ethereal connection between an extraordinary fine press publisher and the somewhat bibli

In the online bookselling Dreamtime about a decade ago, there was Interloc (the larval stage of Alibris), Bibliofind (very clean of limb), and ABE (like fresh Canadian spring water). The Bibliofind list was a great place to talk privately about our profession, and we used to speculate on trends. We envisioned corporations buying these book-loving companies up, and we hoped that one or more of the search services would survive as strong independents and good partners. Ironical

As IOBAns on our internal Announce List know, I was recently elected president of the organization. The board of directors consists of a president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer who are elected every year, and six members at large who serve staggered terms of three years each. We also have eight standing committees (Bylaws, Education, Ethics, Finance, Internet, Membership, Public Relations, and Standard), but some of these were dormant and even vacant. My first goa

Feedback is usually a good thing if it is fair. Most of us engage in and are shaped by feedback in ways we don’t even realize. Evolution itself is one giant feedback loop. As booksellers, one important way to measure the viability of whatever business model we employ is profitability. Less immediately tangible are such factors as reputation. The more prestigious bookseller associations screen applicants in a preemptory bid for high quality based on a number of factors, and if

I recently received a review copy of Fairs, Markets and the Itinerant Book Trade (various editors and authors), hot off the Oak Knoll Press, those heroes of books about bookselling. It is based on papers given at the 27th annual conference on book trade history, and covers such diverse topics as the rise and fall of the early German fairs; itinerant booksellers, printers, and peddlers in Sixteenth-Century Spain and Portugal; the legal entanglements and Italian-French-Spanish

Most of us love books for much more than their commercial value, but how did we go from appreciating them to selling them? In many cases, collectors simply decided to specialize, weed, or trade up, and reselling is a logical way to make room and raise funds. In my case, mother ran a weekend barn sale in rural upstate New York in the 1980s. The rest of us avoided this in one way or another, most notably my dad who didn’t like strangers on the property all that much and retreat