Before I get started telling you about what’s in this issue of The Standard, I’d like to recommend that you take a look at: http://www.compleatweb.com/bookinfo/ Eric Stephenson has put together an extremely helpful database of online venues for selling books, with links to information about listing fees, special fee offers, number of dealers, and number of books in their databases.
We will be working with Eric to try to get more complete information for his database and we’ll try to have updates of Eric’s database in each future issue of The Standard, and hope to add to the types of information supplied by each such selling venue.
Now, on to this issue of The Standard.
First, we have a Memorial Page (by Jim Hart) for Len Lanfranco, who died recently. Len was IOBA’s PR Committee Chair, and because Len was both an outstanding person and a very valuable member of IOBA, we want to honor his memory by telling you a bit about him.
We’ve continued the series of interviews with commercial online book databases, and have interviews in this issue with Biblion, ChooseBooks, ABookCoOp (TomFolio database), Global Book Mart (and congrats to Lisa and Leon for their comeback), and ILAB, and an announcement from BiblioDirect about their imminent official opening. We hope to have interviews in the summer issue with BookAvenue, TitlesDirect, ABAA, and ibooknet (the U.K. cooperative). If I’ve missed a commercial database, please let me know.
We also have interviews with Dick Weatherford and Martin Manley of Alibris, and with Brent James of ABE, about the recent changes at each organization.
There are articles/information from Kathy Lindeman about the upcoming Colorado Book Seminar and from David Gregor about his upcoming Book Seminar in Phoenix. Also a notice from Andy Gutterman about an upcoming revision to BookTrakker. And, finally, information from Sam Gottlieb about his upcoming Glendale, CA Book Fair.
We have an interview with Joyce Meskis, owner of The Tattered Cover Book Store(s) in Denver, CO—as I’m sure you all know, Joyce recently won her lawsuit on customer privacy issues (good on you, Joyce!).
There is another very interesting interview with Lee Miller, American Indian scholar and author of “Roanoke: Solving The Mysteries Of The Lost Colony” and, in the same vein, an extremely interesting article by Ken Lopez about Native American literature.
And, by accident by sending notice of the last issue of the newsletter to the Antiqbook mail list and through the serendipitous happening that he drew the maps for Lee Miller’s “Roanoke”, we have an in-depth interview with Andras Bereznay, cartographer extraordinaire (whose arm I had to twist to get details and stories–some very funny–of his amazing background).
Greg Williams, Maria Bustillos, Julie Fauble, and Mary Watanabe represented IOBA at the recent L.A. Times Festival of Books, and we have lots of information from Greg, Maria and Julie about the festival and the excellent publicity IOBA got there.
Susan Siegel at BookHunter Press (who puts out the printed and online book store guides) has written us a great article on the current trends she sees in the book business.
And, to finish up with newsletter contents, Maria Bustillos of Popula Auctions has written an article for us about the fantastic new fixed-price feature coming to Popula. Watch out, Amazon and eBay! :>)
Now, I want to add a personal note. I want to thank, most whole-heartedly, two women who have been of immense importance to me in being able to get a decent newsletter out to you.
Barbara Lightner has done a wonderful job—giving me ideas, always being there when needed, and she has done some really wonderful interviews, sometimes under very difficult circumstances. Deanna Ramsay is without peer, as far as I’m (and most people I know) concerned. She is a computer guru without equal, and just one of the smartest and best people I know. Both IOBA and I are lucky to have both of them on our side.
Enjoy the newsletter!
Shirley Bryant