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ANNOUNCEMENT (courtesy of Susan Siegel, BookHunter Press) Meet a 14-year-old book collector on C-SPAN’s Book-TV: September 14th, 8am and 12:00 noon (EDT) The two part Book-TV segment will include a video of the presentation the teenager, Basie Gitlin, gave at a Connecticut public library on the different types of books he collects and his views on how children’s fiction and non-fiction books have changed over the years. He also discusses why he usually prefers the older ones. There is also an interview with Basie in his home. Basie has been collecting books since he was 10 and estimates that he currently has over 2,000 books in his collection. Editor’s Note: Nice to know about this–that there is younger generation of readers and collectors! :>) DAVID GREGOR’S BOOKSELLING WORKSHOPS Looking for a cost and time effective option for professional bookseller training? David Gregor will be offering his intensive weekend formats in the following cities during the remainder of 2002: Seattle WA August 10 & 11 Denver CO September 14 & 15 Seattle WA November 2 & 3 Santa Monica CA November 9 & 10 In his Strategic Bookselling Workshop program, the 15 year industry veteran presents such concepts about the used book trade as the 12 truths for increasing profitability, the importance of branding, along with strategies and ideas for growing a book business in our ever changing Internet economy. This multimedia course includes a 100-page workbook and access to future updates on the billion dollar used book business. Additionally, David’s Book Collecting for Fun & Profit offers in this all day event numerous basic aspects of book collecting from both the buyer and sellers perspectives. The course explores such ideas as what makes a book collectible, industry terminology, how to purchase and care for your books, standards for condition and descriptions, and how to identify first editions. Through this nationally presented seminar, as outlined in his televised CSPAN BookTV lecture on book collecting, David Gregor has helped to train over a thousand book collectors, booksellers, librarians and their staffs. Tuition includes an 80-page workbook, a year’s subscription to Firsts Magazine and a first identification booklet. Space in both programs is limited and pre-registration is required. You can register by calling 206/937-6223 or visit http://www.BookSeminarsInternational.com for more details, costs and available discounts. SEATTLE, WASHINGTON ANTIQUARIAN BOOKFAIR, OCTOBER 12-13, 2002 It’s time again to mark your calendars for the 2002 Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair held next to Key Arena in the Seattle Center Pavilion, on October 12th & 13th, 2002. Make sure to note the new times for the fair, Saturday 10 am to 6 pm, and Sunday 11 am to 4 pm, so as not to miss any of this premier antiquarian event. Your $5 admission–good for both days–gains you access to the largest and most prestigious book fair in the Northwest, counting some of the most important dealers in North America among its exhibitors from Canada and across the United States. For this one weekend, the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair will be the largest and best “used, rare and collectible” bookstore on the West Coast, offering for sale thousands of remarkable items on a thousand subjects of interest, as well as maps, prints and autographs. As in years past, the Book Club of Washington will host the pre-fair dinner, but this year the Friday, October 11th event will be held at the Executive Inn Best Western. Our guest speaker will be Deloris Tarzan Ament, author of “Iridescent Light the Emergence of Northwest Art.” Her most recent University of Washington Press publication discusses the work and personalities of The Northwest School, and is richly illustrated with photographs by Mary Randlett, highlighting such talents as Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, and Guy Anderson. Keep abreast of the exhibitors and their unique offerings by visiting the SABF website: http://www.SeattleBookFair.com. Or, for more information about the dinner with Deloris Tarzan Ament and the book fair, please contact Louis Collins at 206/323-3999 or info@seattlebookfair.com. 2001 Seattle Book Fair Fort Worth Book & Paper Show The Basics What: 9th Annual Fort Worth Book & Paper Show When: September 28- 29 (Sat 10-6, Sun 10-4) Where: Will Rogers Complex, Amon Carter Exhibits Hall Central Texas Room Sponsored by: North Texas Booksellers Association You can get the application and information at the association website with a quick click of a mouse. If you have more questions, email Ken Hobbs at omnibooks@email.msn.com. BTW, one of the best things about the room where we have the show is that you can drive right up to your space. No lugging boxes from a distance! Learn more… Authors and Appraisals John Graves and several other authors have agreed to sign either Saturday or Sunday. We are still lining up authors and we will keep the website updated for everyone to know who will be there and when. This was a big hit last year. We hope it will generate an even bigger turn out this year. Another feature that we’re bringing back from last year is the Appraisal Area. Brian Perkins Sr. as agreed to do the appraisals again this year. Brian says he had a lot of fun last year. He hope that there will be more folks bringing interesting books for him to look at. More… More Important Information Where to stay? Check the website! Actually, the Ramada Inn Midtown which is the closest hotel to the show has given the association special rates for Friday, Saturday & sunday nights. There is all the information and phone numbers on the exhibitors page that links from the book show page. There are other hotels listed also, but only the Ramada Inn has given us a discount. If you are in North Texas ( loosely defined), you can join the association and receive a members discount as well. Those who are not in the area, you may join as associate ( non-voting) members.Again, the paperwork is available on the website or contact Mike Utt at bkcolltr@flash.net for more information. After 7/1, only the members discount applies for the show. Read On… We hope you will join us at the 9th Annual Fort Worth Book & Paper Show. Get your paperwork in before the discounts are over! Sincerely, Kelly Chandler , President North Texas Booksellers Association email: info@ntxbooksellers.org voice: 817-926-8208 web: http://www.ntxbooksellers.org Santa Monica International Book Print and Autograph Fair American Book Fairs announces the Santa Monica International Book Print and Autograph Fair (1855 Main St., Santa Monica, California) to be held on Saturday, September 28, 10:00 am to 6:00 pm and Sunday, September 29th from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm., at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Admission is $6, good for both days. Easy access to parking. Children under twelve are admitted without charge. Contact Denise Gottlieb at: Phone: 480/860-2400 or FAX: 480/451-8070, for more information, or go to: http://www.americanbookfairs.com/smonica02.html. Special IOBA Newsletter Discount Order any of the following Used Book Lover’s Guides by September 30, 2002 and Save an additional 10% on top of the regular quantity discounts. (See below for ordering information.) Featured on Book-TV The Book Hunter’s Bible (Amer. Booksellers Assn.) The Used Book Lover’s Guides By David S. and Susan SiegelThe only comprehensive and continuously updated guides, in print or online, to more than 8,000 used, out-of-print and antiquarian book dealers in the United States and Canada. Discover the best book dealers for YOUR kind of books Learn where the bookstores are, when they’re open and how to get to them. Savor the Thrill of the Hunt Softcover, 374 pages, plus 2002 Supplement. $19.95 Sample Listing Sample Map 439 pages, plus 2002 Supplement $18.95 Sample Listing Sample Map Softcover, 374 pages, plus 2002 Supplement $17.95 Sample Listing Sample Map Softcover, 510 pages, plus 2002 Supplement $19.95 Sample Listing Sample Map Softcover, 464 pages, plus 2000 Supplement $14.95 Sample Listing Sample Map Softcover, 528 pages, plus 2002 Supplement $19.95 Sample Listing Sample Map Softcover, 334 pages, plus 2001 Supplement $19.95 Sample Listing Sample Map Ordering Information To order any of the above Used Book Lover’s Guides, Use the online Order Form on the Book Hunter Press web page (www.bookhunterpress.com) Call (914) 245-6608 Send a check to Book Hunter Press, PO Box 193, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598. Visa and MasterCard are accepted. Remember to mention this IOBA Newsletter when you place your order so that your Special IOBA 10% Discount is deducted from the total when the order is processed. Shipping ChargesShip ToMethodFirst BookEach Addtional BookUSAMedia Mail$3.50$1.00USAPriority$6.00$2.00Canada*Surface$8.00$3.00**Canada*Air$8.00$5.00**OtherSurface$8.00$4.00**OtherAir$10.00$10.00** * Add 7% GST ** For four or more copies, email for a reduced rate. For more information about The Used Book Lover’s Guides, including the Online version of the Guides, please visit our web page at Book Hunter Press

I rented the movie, “We were Soldiers Once…and Young” and found it very well done. I highly recommend it. I then began a search through my boxes of books and found a copy of the book. I need some help on determining whether it is a true first, and hope you might be able to provide some information in this regard. The book is in f/f condition with no price clipped on the d/w. Random House. Copyright 1992. 8765432. First Edition isbn 0-679-41158-5. Methinks this is a first edition, second printing. Thanks in advance for your help and kind responses, John Scott Porterfield You would seem to have a first edition. The Random House rule is that they don’t use the number “1” in their line, but remove the words “first edition” at the time of second printing. May I suggest you invest in McBrides book on First Editions, and of course any other reference books you can get. Reference books should be a requirement in the biz and McBrides, although not the only one that covers these questions, is the least expensive. Richard Mori of Mori Books And….. It is a FIRST EDITION. In 1992, Random House began its number line with a “2” and the words, “FIRST EDITION.” For the second printing they simply dropped the verbiage and for the third printing they dropped the “2,” etc. Hope this helps. Sam in AZ I know this has been answered before, but I suppose I wasn’t paying attention because I can’t remember the answer – what percentage is normally charged for consignment sales? Jennifer Sadler There is no “normal” or standard percentage, at least in the used book trade. The most common consignment fees are in the 10% to 20% range (largely a function of the kind of material being sold). 10%, 15% and 20% are all used and seem fair and reasonable to me although in the case of a more established dealer as the consignee for less saleable material, especially in quantity, fees as high as 40 to 50% are not unheard of. Of course, these numbers are all negotiable. Sam Gottlieb. And….. New book stores can be thought of as consignment sales for books since they can return them for credit. Typical discounts for them run between 35 and 50 percent. As I’m sure you know, this is a very general statement and there are non-returnable books. In general, it is my experience that the non returnables enjoy deeper discounts than returnables. And from the editor: I have accepted books on a 50/50 percentage basis, and 30% or 40% as well. A local antique shop gives 60/40 in favor of the consignor – a very generous arrangement. I think a lot depends on the value of the books consigned, and if the two parties can arrange an amicable agreement. As you can see, the percentages are all over the place. I would suggest you set up your guidelines based on what you have learned, and be flexible. DeWayne White, of White Unicorn When listing a book that is a later printing, I have been listing the date that the printing occurred rather than the copyright date. Is this the proper procedure? Cynthia Putt Parnassus On Wheels The standard format of cataloging the date of a book has been to indicate the last date shown wherever it appears and, most important, when that date appears on the title page the date is shown by itself—without parenthesis–, but when the only or last date shown is on the copyright page it is shown in parenthesis. Most dealers who have been cataloging books for years understand and use this standard format, as do most if not all ABAA dealers. This standard format tells any reader if the date appears on the title page or not, and consequently helps everyone understand when that particular copy was printed. As you probably know, most often when there is a date on the title page of a book, and that date agrees with the copyright date on the verso of the title page, the book is a First Edition; not always, but usually. When a cataloger fails to indicate if the date appears on the title page or its verso by the use of this standard format, the customer cannot be certain the book is a true First Edition or a later printing or reprint. This standard format also helps to clearly explain exceptions. For example, if we catalog a book showing the date in parenthesis and state it is a “First Edition” or “First Printing”, we are telling our customer and others the book is a true First Edition or First Printing even though the date does not appear on the title page. For many early twentieth century books, and before, this is especially important. I hope this helps, and encourages others to adopt this standard format. Michael Mart The Good Times Bookshop Our thanks to all of the above contributors. Jean S. McKenna – Books Chairman Education Committee And finally, this helpful bit of information from Vic Zoschak of Tavistock Books: Per requests I’ve received, this a follow-up on my previous posting regarding the correct use of the word ‘edition’ as applied to books from the hand press period. The definition below comes from Fredson Bowers’ PRINCIPLES OF BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION [New Castle DE: Oak Knoll Books, 1998], pg 108: PRINCIPLES OF BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION “An edition of hand-printed books is ordinarily the whole number of copies printed at any time or times from substantially the same setting of type. An early printer usually distributed his type soon after the form for which it had been set was printed. If, after the book had been placed on sale, more copies were required than had originally been printed, the book was perforce completely reset and a new edition created. The laws of the Stationers’ Company limiting the commercial edition of an early book to twelve to fifteen hundred copies had a marked effect on multiplying the editions of popular works.” For those that don’t know Bowers, quoting from G. Thomas Tanselle’s introduction to the copy I have in front of me will sum up Bowers’ standing in the bibliographic world: [Bowers’ work is] “the standard guide on the subject*.” * The subject, of course, being primarily the physical description of a book from the hand-press period, though there are chapters in his work on bibliographical descriptions of 19th & 20th C. books, and their inherent problems/challenges. Regards, Vic Zoschak Tavistock Books #reference

URLS : http://www.addall.com (new book search), http://used.addall.com/ (used book search), http://www.amusicarea.com (CDs), http://www.amoviearea.com (DVD & VHS), http://www.amagarea.com(magazine subscriptions) . Email: pr@addall.com Lily, when did AddALL actually start business? And can you tell us who was involved, and how you actually came up with your streamlined format and gathered the personnel talent to start your company? AddALL started business in August 1998. Hup wrote the software. I helped with non-technical issues. Both of us had other jobs till recently so we used to run AddALL in late evenings and on weekends. We worked from the corners of our bedrooms and had “board meetings” at my dining room table. Hup became full-time with AddALL a year ago and I this past July. We didn’t have an office till last November. I have to confess that we didn’t always have this streamlined format. There were a few weeks in AddALL’s early history that we, like almost everybody else then, featured banner ads. However, we soon decided to make AddALL banner ads free because we found banner ads extremely irritating and wanted to spare our users the pain. We have been recruiting mostly among acquaintances. AddALL is an “Internet-ional” company. Our team members have been working and collaborating with each other from all over the world to serve users from all over the world via the internet. Are the original founders of the company all still involved? What role do you personally fill? For instance, do you have a programming manager, a business manager, etc.? Yes. Hup’s still the tech guy; I’m still the biz gal. AddALL is too small for serious business titles. We joked that if we had to call ourselves something more important, Hup would be the CTO—cheap technical officer, and me the CEO—chief errands officer. Where and how did you come up with the idea of the quotes? I love that—always take the time to read them! Did you have to obtain permission to use each? And how many different quotes are there, total? Are they rotated on a random basis? It just hit me one day. I wanted to share something meaningful with AddALL users. I’ve always liked quotes and used to keep a journal of my favorite quotes in different languages. I don’t believe we need to obtain permission since we do not use the quotes for profit. In addition, many quotes are in the public domain. There are hundreds of quotes, all handpicked by AddALL team members. At first we had only Tagore quotes because both Hup and I like Tagore a lot. We like his messages promoting compassion, tolerance, appreciation, and non-violence. After a while, some users complained that “talking trees and birds and bees” drove them crazy. So we took some time and added more variety. Yes, we rotate the quotes on a random basis. How does your fee schedule work that you charge databases being searched by AddALL? We ask an affiliate-to-be to choose one of three options that suits their budget and needs: 1) a monthly flat fee based on volume of books listed on a site; or 2) a per click-through fee based on numbers of queries we direct to their site; or 3) sales commission if a site already has an affiliate program. We also accept or offer traffic exchange in supplement of any of the above-mentioned choices. I really like your “strict” search feature that you’ve added—it does seem to completely cut out paperbacks when you ask for a hardback (though not so accurate if you ask for paperbacks only) and it is still very speedy. I do notice, however, that if you ask for a first edition that book club hardbacks still are in the search results. Do you have any plans for further refining this strict search to only return results mentioning first (or 1st) edition? Or is this an impossible dream, given the many ways booksellers describe their books? Yes it’s technically possible and we do have plans to work on it. We keep improving our site by adding new features and fixing bugs. Hup promised to work on it once he finishes coding for our magazine site (http://www.amagazinearea.com). I notice that you’ve recently added some sister sites, http://www.amusicarea.com/, for music, and http://www.amoviearea.com/, for movies. From a casual look at these, it appears that currently they are only for new items—do you have plans to extend these sites into the used market? And, are these search sites built on the same technology you used for AddALL’s book searches? How are they working out for you? Music and movies are completely new territories for us. There is still a lot we need to learn. We have a backlog of things we want to, need to, and simply must do. We do not plan to enter the used market anytime soon. We borrowed a thing or two from AddALL’s book search, but we are using mostly more advanced and newer technologies that were not available when we wrote the book search program. Do you see AddALL expanding into other markets in the future? If not giving away business plans, are you currently working on any such expansions? Yes. Yes. And no further comments without giving away our business plans. You will see the expansions as they happen. You say on your site that the people involved in AddALL are book readers. Who are some of these people, and what types of book do each of you enjoy? Please see a combined answer below. We’d love to get to know each of you involved in AddALL a bit as people. Could you each tell us a bit about yourselves, i.e., backgrounds, hobbies, etc.? Sure. Following “bios” are either provided by an AddALL member him/herself, or compiled by me with their input and approval. For Hup Born in Malaysia. Went to college in Taiwan. Dual degrees in psychology and information science. Native in the Perl language. Also speaks Mandarin Chinese, Fukienese (a Chinese dialect), and a little Malay. Enjoys badminton, skiing and paintball when his feet, which he injured when practicing Tae Kwon, do not hurt. Lives in Arcadia, California. Besides being partners, Hup and Lily have been close friends for years. Favorite authors: Tagore (as far as I know.) Favorite books: ??? ……. (He gave me a blank look when I asked him this question. He’s been doing so much programming recently for our magazine comparison site (amagarea.com) that all he can recall is computer books and those are NOT his favorites.) (Hup does almost all of the complex programming behind AddALL’s simple looking web sites.) From Lily I came to Los Angeles in 1991 from Shanghai, China. Though I don’t like school and am a frequent drop-out, I’ve always loved to read. I focus so much when I read that I’d tune out completely. As a child, one afternoon when playing hide-and-seek I hid under a desk and read till my father finally found me in the evening. My cousins had given up a long time ago and the adults thought I was missing. Later I was punished for “reading without proper lighting or breaks.” Though my degrees are in Japanese Culture and business, my favorite genres are poems, essays, science, and medical books. The first time I stayed up all night to read a book, it was about quantum physics. However, recently I’ve been reading mostly business and legal titles. My favorite authors include Hugo, Dickens, Twain, Asimov, Jules Verne, Saint-Exupery, Anderson, and O Henry. I also enjoy classical Chinese and Japanese works. I like daydreaming, playing the piano, listening to classic music, taking walks, doing flower arrangements and gardening. I’m also trying to learn to whistle, swim, and ride a bicycle. I hope someday my earning power will match my ambitions in charity, and I’d have more time to read, write, and do volunteer work. (I manage non-technical issues at AddALL.) From Gail I joined AddALL in August, 2000, having known (and appreciated) Lily for several years. I have been an avid reader all my life and actually don’t mind my current bouts with insomnia, as they give me time in the middle of the night for a good, solid read. I have lived long enough to have done all sorts of things, from running an experimental multi-arts theater on St. Mark’s Place in NY (in the 60s) to running a building site that called itself a hotel on the island of Crete (in the 80s). I am a pre-school teacher by profession and for many years most of my favorite friends and acquaintances were under the age of five. I have taught English as a Foreign Language to adults in Poland, China and Egypt and can now say that many of my favorite friends and acquaintances speak English as their second or third language. In addition to my work at AddALL.com, I conduct individualized rare book searches for a local independent bookstore, where AddALL makes me look good. I have been married to Robert Westbrook for 25 years, have two wonderful sons and two grandsons who are, of course, extraordinary in every way. I read more fiction than non-fiction – my favorite author of the moment is Proust (my husband excepted, of course) and favorite poet of the moment is Billy Collins. (Gail answers each and every one of the customer service e-mails, and provides editing services to AddALL .) From Robert Robert has loved books since an early age, both as a reader and a writer. His first book, Journey Behind The Iron Curtain, was published by G.P. Putnam’s when he was seventeen years old, a journal of a high school trip to the Soviet Union. A few years later he published a novel based on his student days at Columbia College in the 1960s, The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart , that was made into an MGM film starring Don Johnson. He has gone on to write 13 books, fiction and non-fiction, including Intimate Lies, a critically-acclaimed account of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final years in Hollywood, two separate mystery series, and two novels based on screenplays, The Mexican and Insomnia. His most recent mystery, Ancient Enemy, published by Signet, was nominated for a Shamus Award. Robert lives in New Mexico with his wife Gail. He loves to travel, play jazz piano, and ski. He is also particularly fond of sushi. In the past five years, he has been teaching writing at the Taos Institute of Art and on Cape Cod. You can learn more about Robert on his website, robertwestbrook.com (Robert pens the weekly book chats for AddALL.) For Stephen Born in Shanghai, educated in Japan, he now lives in Vancouver, Canada. He is the design guy as well as the peacekeeper at AddALL. He has been Lily’s buddy and make-do shrink for years. His favorite books include: Rich Dad and Poor Dad, Dreams of the Red Chamber (a Chinese classic), and martial arts novels by Jin Yong. Recently he’s been devouring books on entrepreneurship. His dream is to have his own trade or computer company, create jobs and give something back to his adopted motherland of Canada. For hobbies, he likes Karaoke (sing-along), golfing, and making people laugh. He loves life itself and thinks every moment is a wonderful moment. (Stephen brought you the HELP guides.) For Nancy Her friendship with Lily began at age two and has deepened throughout the years. A newly wed, she lives in Shanghai and is expecting (very nervously!) her first baby (or babies, as she hopes). Her favorite things include eating gourmet food (the more cheese and calories in it the better), travel, shopping, counting money and daydreaming of making more money, and writing short stories and essays. Nancy likes reading novels and has published in newspapers. A few of her favorite books are: Gone with the Wind , The Yearling , and The Thorn Birds . Her favorite authors include Mark Twain, Yi Shu, and Aileen Chang. (Nancy brought you the Chinese version of AddALL.) Thank you so much, Lily, for allowing us to interview you! Thank you for inviting AddALL to “meet” your members and let people know us better. Now that both Hup and I have gone fulltime with AddALL, I hope we will do better at improving our existing services and bringing out new ones. #SearchEngines

By: Lisa & Leon Martin Global Book Mart, http://www.gbmbooks.com, is pleased to announce the re-launching of our database. GBM is now accepting dealers to upload inventory. We are not charging listing fees at this time. There is a one-time set-up fee of $20.00. Additional premium services will be added in the next months. While these additions are being implemented to our services, no listing fees will be charged. Details are available at the website. Global Book Mart http://www.gbmbooks.com The Innovative, Independent Book Database Has Returned! #databases

URL: http://www.bibliophile.net What is [was] your purpose in starting a online book database (i.e., to help online booksellers, to get a database that does what you think a book database should do, because it’s a good business to be in, all of the above, none of the above, or ????). In 1998, when I was first thinking about bibliophile.net as an interesting database project, as far as I knew there were no multi-lingual book databases on-line. I felt there was a need for one and the first incarnation of the multi-lingual site went live in November, 1999. Is this a long-term commitment on your part? Where do you see yourself and your database in 3 years? 5 years? It is a long-term commitment. We now have over 600 dealers and 3.2 million books listed. I foresee bibliophile.net remaining the centerpiece of the bibliophilic services that we will be offering in the next few years. What lister book database inventory programs do you/will you support? We support any consistent data format. We no longer accept word processor documents. What are your upload procedures? Deletion procedures? Are “wants” listings available? For sale matches? Are any additions/changes planned? We encourage our dealers to use our file browse and upload page, but many dealers prefer to FTP directly into the upload server, especially if they are using a book management software that has this facility. BooksellerPro, Booktrakker and Bookhound are three such software programs. We also accept files from the upload service, Bookrouter. Delete files can be sent by the same procedure – the upload page for flagged data such as UIEE is simpler than the page for unflagged data which offers add and delete options. Wants listings are available for both dealers and buyers, and dealers can upload wants files. Listings and wants are compared every 24 hours and users are informed of a match by email. Of course, all of these upload and deletion operations can be carried out at the individual book level from the dealer’s admin page. For sale matches are not offered. What customer service (for both sellers and buyers) do you/will you have? We prefer email enquiries that we respond to within minutes to a few hours, at most. However, we also field phone calls in several languages. Will you/do you have any quality (i.e., descriptions, shipping, and/or customer service) standards for your listers? If so, what will be/are the consequences of violating those standards? We leave this to the dealers and are happy as long as they’re not misleading anyone. However, we don’t relist books that have prices marked-up by intermediaries. We list dealers’ stock at the list price of the dealer. That boast is prominent in our marketing. What are your technical arrangements (in non-technical language, please) to ensure reliability of service? Future growth? Additional services? My company, ammonet, which owns bibliophile.net, is a server collocation and hosting firm, among other things, so we operate our own servers and have no growth limitations in that respect. All of our databases run on server pairs, which minimizes downtime. Indexing and uploads are carried out on a server separate from the one that serves data to the book buyers. Will you/do you have the capability of taking credit card info for orders? If so, what can you tell us about the safety procedures you have or will have in place to ensure the security of such info? As mentioned above, we do take card data on behalf of our dealers. We don’t process the cards; the dealers do that themselves if and when they’re ready to do so. Our programmers are highly knowledgeable in the security field. Data are encrypted while in transit both to and from our secure server, and they remain encrypted on the server, which is itself secured. We upload patches immediately whenever potential security holes are reported, and we periodically attempt to crack our own server. Even with the benefit of inside knowledge of the configuration, we’ve never succeeded in breaking into our secure system. And, needless to say, we encourage our dealers to delete card data from their databases when they’ve processed it. Do you ever plan to process credit card orders through your database (rather than simply passing on the info to the lister) and, if so, will the lister or buyer bear the processing cost, and how long will it take to get payment to the lister? No. Although we’re based in Switzerland, we have no plans to enter the banking sector. I believe the model whereby an intermediary, in addition to the card companies, processes card data is fundamentally flawed. It’s not secure and it’s too expensive for whoever ends up paying for the processing. In an international context, the effects of currency fluctuations are an additional burden, and the problems of returns, chargebacks, fraud, typos, etc., simply make this model untenable. Do you have any plans for programs associated with your database that would involve anything other than direct contact between seller and buyer? No. We believe in letting the dealer and buyer work things out to their mutual satisfaction. We intervene only if a buyer or a dealer feels badly done by. Do you have or do you plan to have an “all word search” capability? This is still difficult to reconcile with display speed when we list three million plus books. However, we have developed our own indexing methodologies that allow huge indexes of this kind to be regenerated in less than 24 hours (which is our index update cycle), so we might do this. We did program exactly this for the smaller database of Bibliopoly. What search capabilities does your database have now? What is planned for the future? On the main search page, we have most of the usual search capabilities – author, title, publisher, etc., and we attempt to allow searches by book language. It’s also possible to search our list of dealers by name or country and consult their stock from their on-the-fly home page – by catalogue or normal search. However, searches depend on the data provided by the dealers, and in many cases the field structure precludes really good searches. I think as database managers, we more or less have to follow the development and acceptance by the dealers of good book management programs. However, we hope to encourage better data formatting with our assisted cataloging system, about which more below. In the near future, we want to introduce display ranking, so that search returns can be ranked by price and so on. We already allow filtering by upload date. On what will you base your listing fees? What fees do you have now or plan to have? At present, listing on our main site is free. We plan to charge on a per order basis for sales generated by AddAll and Bookfinder, basically to cover the costs. Listing on those services will be opt-in and it will be possible to set a lower book price limit for AddAll/Bookfinder listings. Do you plan to have or now have your database searched by Addall or Bookfinder or any other meta-search site? We list on AddAll now and Bookfinder will be next. How do you plan to advertise your database (both to draw listers and buyers)? Good question! Marketing is our main expense and we are constantly testing new possibilities. Google AdWords was productive but became increasingly expensive with their new system. We do print campaigns when special opportunities offer themselves. I suspect that the smaller listing services will have to band together increasingly for marketing purposes. What background or experience do you or other people involved with your database have that relates to the online book or online book database business? Well, I was a research scientist until recently, so I’m able to boast twenty years of database management experience, but I guess forty years of book collecting counts the most. Do you or are you planning to have professional management, bookseller management, or???? We offer several services to our dealers and the number will increase. Currently, any dealer listing on our database can have a custom search interface for the dealer’s own web site. It’s not mandatory to show any kind of link to bibliophile.net, so the search and shopping basket are individual to the dealer. We also offer a secure credit card data transfer system. This is a browser-based system for dealers who already process cards but need a secure way to collect card data from their customers. It works in conjunction with our shopping cart but can be used entirely independently at the same time. We are programming a java-based, cross-platform book management software for another company which will market it as soon as development is complete. What markets (geographical and/or demographic) are you aiming at? With the multiple languages, we aim to bring in book buyers who are perhaps not completely happy buying online using an interface in a language they don’t understand very well. However, our aim is to cover as much of the book-buying population as has access to the internet. What services/features does your database have that you feel sets you apart and/or will ensure the success of your database? Well, our biggest bibliophilic project at present is an assisted cataloguing database which looks like being one of the most comprehensive databases of book records available online in one place. It far exceeds the content of the ISBN-based databases for the obvious reason that ISBNs go back only thirty years or so, while we have records back to the 16th Century. It allows users to search with extreme rapidity on the basis of one or two strings from the author, title, publisher, date and ISBN fields, to save and edit records, and to download them in the format of their choice to their own PCs and/or to the listing services of their choice. I guess the speed of the search was the biggest technological breakthrough in this project. We can search an author name in a database of around 12 million records in a few milliseconds. Our aim is to bring large numbers of hitherto uncatalogued books onto the market by greatly diminishing the labour of data entry, and of course we hope that a certain number of these books will be sold via bibliophile.net. A side effect, but an important one, will be more comprehensive book records which will suit the kind of search mechanism that bibliophile.net uses. #databases

URL: http://www.wantedbooks.com/ When A. R. (Randy) Backer and James Bryant (Backer-Bryant Academic Library Services) approached web developer, Patty Johnson, about their idea for a new web site in early 2002, they knew they had a new concept for online book databases. They imagined a site where book buyers could post their wanted books “out loud,” for the world to fill. They felt buyers would come to a site where they could advertise for the books they wanted and, while there, would search the books offered. The only thing missing, Backer and Bryant thought, was a database of books for sale to complement their want system. Soon after, they entered into partnership with Johnson, merging 1.5 Million book listings from over 150 booksellers (from the previous bookquarters.com) and wantedbooks.com was born. A. R. (Randy) Backer owns and operates a bricks and mortar bookshop at 7 West Street, Warwick, New York. He has also been selling books online for the past seven years and, during that time, partnered with Bryant to form Backer-Bryant Academic Library Services, purchasing out-of-print books and providing other services for university and college libraries. James Bryant is proprietor of Carpe Diem Fine Books, Monterey, California. Bryant, a member of the Anitiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), has been an online bookseller since 1995 and partner in Backer-Bryant Academic Library Services since 1999. Patty Johnson is the operations manager, web-developer and database programmer for wantedbooks.com. In business with her husband, Walter (http://www.dreedle.com), she has extensive experience in database management and development as well as website development for online bookselling. On wantedbooks.com, book buyers are able to search the inventories of hundreds of dealers and can publicly post the titles they seek. Anyone – anywhere – may send a quote to fill the need. Buyers and sellers include individuals, collectors, libraries, and dealers. Sellers are starting to fill the wants that are posted and this provides a positive experience for the buyers. Since launching the new wantedbooks.com in early September, 2002, the site has experienced a significant increase in activity; web sessions are up over 20%. In addition to the want system, the site is working on adding features and functionality. “The single most exciting feature I’m working on,” Patty says, “is category browsing. I feel it’s important to offer buyers a selection of titles, rather than forcing them to search for titles by author and subject only. I’m also developing an advanced search function to improve the searchability of the site.” For example, the new category browsing system, now under development, provides browseable subcategories. wantedbooks.com recently ran targeted email and advertising campaigns for the American West and Genealogy subcategories. Each campaign resulted in sales. Having said that, however, sales are not yet where they sustain all of the sellers’ monthly fees; some sellers do better than others. Patty, Randy, and James believe that through the combined effects of promoting the want system and targeted advertising, sales will continue to grow. To reinforce this belief, they state that all revenues in excess of operational expenses will go towards advertising and promotion. They will take no salaries or draws for the foreseeable future. wantedbooks.com sellers are getting involved as well. Sellers contribute content such as a “Mysteries & More” section that contains book reviews, author information, and collecting tips. This section of the site is edited by Ken Fermoyle, writer, editor, journalist and bookseller. It includes Ken’s feature on Tony Hillerman, along with a review of Hillerman’s latest work. Also included are Chris Adam Smith’s interviews with authors Zoe Sharp and Simon Scarrow. Chris Adam Smith is a British book collector, bookseller and author. All sellers on the site are welcome to contribute. On internal seller pages, the site provides content such as Carlos Martinez’s insightful article on some of the issues affecting booksellers today. Carlos is a writer and bookseller, and a member of the Midwest Bookhunters. Regarding the backbone of the site, Patty says: “We chose to outsource our web hosting requirements to MaximumASP.com. They have wonderful technical support. The site reliably operates with 99.9% uptime. No other hosting company offers the same level of reliability and technical expertise.” The site operates on a Windows 2000 server, utilizing Microsoft SQL Server for its database and Active Server Pages technology. Hardware consists of Dual-processor 1.26GHz Dell 1650, 2GB RAM, (3) 73GB 10K SCSI drives, Hardware RAID 5 drive array, Dual load-balanced gigabit NICs, Dual redundant power supplies, Windows 2000 Server SP2. Depending on network traffic and nationwide bottleneck status, their web server traffic is routed down one or more of four DS3 circuits – capable of up to 180Mbps total throughput. These circuits are provided by MCI/UUnet, Sprint, and AT&T. Their data center uses only Cisco routing and switching equipment. Every server is fed into dual Catalyst 2900 high speed switches that channel all server traffic into two Cisco 12000 series routers, using BGP4 routing protocol for complete redundancy. If one router should have an equipment failure, the other one picks up the traffic. This lowers the possibility of network downtime due to an equipment failure. “The last few years have been a tumultuous time for the on-line book world,” according to Bryant. “We’ve seen many sites come and go. Will wantedbooks.com still be here in five years? I can’t answer that question. But, we are committed to making a full effort to make it happen. Obviously, the economics have to make sense for any business to continue. But we are seeing signs of growth, and are basing our business model on building on that growth. Of course, we need booksellers to list with us to make it happen. While we are currently a flat-fee site, if the market dictates, we would go to a commission based model, or make any other changes that make good business sense for us and our sellers.” Randy looks at it a bit differently. “I want to be Excellence First, Success Second driven–not primarily bottom line oriented. Our primary business priorities are Service, Service and Service. We are aiming at anyone who enjoys the world of books (buyers, sellers, collectors, readers)…. wantedbooks.com, is for people who care about books. #databases

The Midwest Bookhunters held their annual fall book fair October 13th, at the DePaul Student Center on the Campus of DePaul University in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. Dealers and customers were both excited and pleased with the new venue of the DePaul Student Center, which is a brand new facility and is used as the University’s Student Union. Previously the Midwest Bookhunters had held other book fairs at DePaul; however, it has been several years before a suitable facility became available at DePaul, mainly due to extensive campus construction and re-furbishing. Many booksellers and bookfair attendees were pleased with the new setting–several attendees cited the “handy” and “easy to get to” location as a positive factor. There were several parking garages nearby and plenty of onstreet parking in surrounding streets. The Midwest Bookhunters Fall Bookfair boasted 45 dealers from nine states, including Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Some of the over 550 book fair attendees and customers came from as far away as Toronto, Ontario. Many customers spent the day leisurely browsing the unique and interesting tomes and treasures presented by the select group of booksellers. One gentleman spent over 5 ½ hours poring over old theater programs in one booth. Dealers were pleased to see that book buying was back in vogue–many shoppers were carrying several bags of books each–an encouragement to sellers and fair organizers alike. Usually each book fair is bound to have its problems, and while many booksellers were uncertain of how things would go with both an entirely new venue and new book fair manager (Darlene Spohrer of Autumn Leaves Books), this was one different in that things went very smoothly overall, and none of the expected potential snafus had any effect on the either the book fair attendees or the booksellers participating. One of the concerns that didn’t happen was the possibility of people getting stuck in traffic from the Chicago Marathon that was scheduled to be held at the same time as the book fair. Also, loading in and out of the Student Center went very smoothly, as all entryways to the inside of the Student Center were on the street level for easy hand-truck access. After set-up on Saturday evening, several booksellers enjoyed a catered dinner from the Student Center kitchen. Dealers had a good time un-winding and telling stories of books that got away and other book sale tales. We were delighted to be joined by veteran Chicago bookseller Paul Rohe, who formerly had a bookshop with his son Chris in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. Security is always an issue at book fairs, especially for the sellers and organizers. One of the practices the Midwest Bookhunters has adopted is sealing all purchases in clear plastic bags with unbreakable seals and the receipts and bookseller identification facing out. This enables the security at the door to efficiently check customer purchases before they exit the book fair. As always, it is a good idea to have more than one person at each booth, and it is wise to lock more valuable books in display cases for added protection. Several of the dealers offered unique and exciting wares, many of which deserve to be mentioned here. Here are some of the highlights: Phyllis and Dick Tholin, of Phyllis Tholin Books (Evanston, IL) offered a large folio volume of Western Japanese handmade paper and block prints. Each village in the region provided a sample of the paper and beautiful classic block prints on the paper representing them with detailed descriptions, including information on the papermakers. Japanese Papermaking in Western Japan, 1931. $1450.00 (There is a companion volume to this for Eastern Japan; however, that volume was not present.) Wesley Williams (Wesley C. Williams Bookseller, Formerly Publix Books, Cleveland Heights, OH) offered Boswell’s Life of Johnson, First Edition, First State of 1791 for $8500.00, and for the completist, a Second State (also 1791) of the same for $4750.00. Williams, who specializes in nature and medical books, also had a copy of William Beaumont on the Gastric Juices, published in Plattsburg, NY, in 1883–hard to find in it’s original binding–offered for $2500.00. Not everything at the fair was for the big spenders. Carlos Martinez of Bibliodisa (Chicago, IL) offered an inscribed autobiography of famed war hero Eddie Rickenbacker, that read “With My Very Best Wishes, To S. S.- Sincerely, Eddie Rickenbacker, 1967. ” for $100.00 George and Mary Ritzlin (George Ritlzin Maps & Prints, Hightland Park, IL) brought their usual wonderful myriad selection of hand colored maps. One in particular was a hand colored copperplate engraving by Morse, of Rhode Island and Connecticut. It was published in Boston in 1802, showing township and county boundaries and features details such as swamps, caves, and forts. Also, a “Shaking Quaker” (Shaker) settlement appears at the uppermost reaches of the Connecticut River. $150.00 Dennis Melhouse of First Folio (Paris, TN) who does NOT carry books that look like “dog chew toys” as some previous articles have erroneously claimed, but rather a wonderful selection of fine bindings, all beautifully decorated by skilled decorative book binders, offered a great Chicago-related item: a two volume set of the Dove’s Press Edition of Paradise Lost and Regained in Cuneo Exhibition Bindings Specially bound for Mr. And Mrs. Marshall Field, 1902 (Paradise Lost) and 1905, (Paradise Regained) . The Chicago Rare Book Center, a multi-dealer shop in downtown Chicago, offered a copy of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, illustrated by Ernest Nister, famed for his Santa Claus Illustrations. Chicago Rare, as it is referred to, offered a fine selection of each its participating dealer’s wares. When asked about book or bookfair highlights, Maggie Page of Page Books (Hillsboro, OH) had just sold a copy of Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic Where the Wild Things Are, saying that it was Sendak’s best work, for which he had won the Caldecott Medal of Honor. Page also had a full complement of the Madeleine series books – all first editions in dustjackets–that would sell for approximately $1400.00 all together. Customers and Booksellers left the show with satisfied smiles all around. The Midwest Bookhunters Spring Book Fair is scheduled as a two-day affair on May 3rd and 4th, 2003, at Loyola University in Chicago. Please call 708-418-5620 or email info@midwestbookhunters.org for more information. Bookseller information: Page Books Maggie Page 117 Danville Pike, Hillsboro, OH. 45133 937-840-0991 pagebooks@cinci.rr.com First Folio Dennis R. Melhouse 1206 Brentwood, Paris, TN. 38242 731/-644-9940 firstfolio@bellsouth.net Wesley C. Williams, Bookseller (formerly Publix Books) P.O. Box 181075 Cleveland Heights, OH 44118 publixbooks@stratos.net Bibliodisa Carlos Martinez 4400 S. Spaulding Street Chicago, IL. 60632 cmartbooks@aol.com George Ritzlin Maps and Prints 473 Roger Williams Avenue Highland Park, IL. 60035 847-433-2627 Phyllis Tholin, Books 824 Ridge Terrace Evanston, IL 847-475-1174 Tholbooks@aol.com By: Aimee England URL: http://www.volume1books.com #MidwestBookhunters

One of the Internet’s great sites is Steve Trussel’s: http://www.trussel.com/ This can keep you involved all day, so you might want to go directly to the book section at first, at: http://www.trussel.com/f_books.htm There is something for everyone here, and just reading through from start to finish provides a course in Knowing Books 101. If you have a question about anything that has to do with books, you’ll likely find an answer here, or a link to the place where you’ll find it. One of the most useful sections is SetMaker where odd volumes can be listed for sale or wanted, in an effort to reunite sets of books. There is an explanation of ISBNs and how they work, a currency converter, metric and Roman numeral converters. There are links and subscription information for the major book lists and search engines, to major library catalogues, to shows and seminars. There is information on book terms, dust jackets, bindings, Modern Library, the Encyclopedia Britannica, pseudonyms. And then there are Howard Fast, Lafcadio Hearn, Maigret, and Sherlock Holmes on postage stamps. Jill Morgan of Purple House Press has amassed samples of 634 author and illustrator signatures (as of September 2002) so you can be sure that what you have is the real thing. http://www.purplehousepress.com/sig.htm Looking for a book that everyone knows about, but no one has ever seen? Visit The Invisible Library–a catalogue of books that appear in other books, books that never were. http://www.invisiblelibrary.com/index.html What does it mean? An authoritative site that explains book terms from Stanford University explains it all. http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/don/dt/dt0226.html If Nancy Drew books are a mystery to you, try this. http://www.stratemeyer.net/stratemeyer/drew/drewform.htm And help with the Bobbsey twins is here. http://www.keeline.com/Bobbsey/ http://members.aol.com/case4nancy/library.htm Greek to you? Or Latin? This is an outstanding site for information on the classics in English, Greek, and Latin. http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/classics.html This site is helpful for kids’ book research. There is some pricing guidance, info on illustrators and authors, and a special Wizard who will help to identify books like, “It had a cow in it, and was red. All I remember is that the cow went to Starbucks and got a latte.” http://www.thebestkidsbooksite.com/ #reference

From: LEO HARRISON URL: http://www.biblion.com What is your purpose in starting a online book database (i.e., to help online booksellers, to get a database that does what you think a book database should do, because it’s a good business to be in, all of the above, none of the above, or ????). Biblion.com is a natural extension of our shop in London’s Mayfair, where some 100 dealers display their stock. When our site was first launched in April 2000, we wanted to offer booksellers who were unable to display books within our premises the opportunity of participating in the Biblion project. Is this a long-term commitment on your part? Where do you see yourself and your database in 3 years? 5 years? Yes, our commitment is for the long term. We wish to grow steadily and constantly strive to improve the service we provide our participating dealers and their customers. In these uncertain times of mergers and takeovers, we remain fiercely independent and have no intention of selling our clients to the highest bidder. What lister book database inventory programs do you/will you support? We can accept files from any bookseller’s database that can export files in delimited text or UIEE format. What are your upload procedures? Deletion procedures? Are “wants” listings available? For sale matches? Are any additions/changes planned? Our unique upload engine allows dealers to map their own field settings against Biblion’s own field structure. In this way, dealers should not have to modify their databases and once set, a dealer’s field arrangement is stored on our server allowing for very simple uploading of stock. However, we are always happy to accept files sent as email attachments, should the dealer prefer. Books can be deleted in batches via our upload engine or individually through our online form. We require dealers to update their inventories on a regular basis. Customers can register as many “wants” on our system as they require. They are required to log in to do so. They can choose to be informed of their want status daily, weekly, or monthly and all their wants are held on a page from which quick searches can be conducted. This can save a considerable amount of time for those customers who have permanent wants and wish to run regular searches for them. No “For Sale Matches” as yet, but this is planned. What customer service (for both sellers and buyers) do you/will you have? We are always delighted to help sellers and buyers in any way we can. We provide support via telephone and email during UK office hours: Mon – Fri, 10am to 6pm. Will you/do you have any quality (i.e., descriptions, shipping, and/or customer service) standards for your listers? If so, what will be/are the consequences of violating those standards? All sellers are obliged to agree to our terms of trading prior to signing up with us. Sellers are required to keep up to date inventories and to respond to orders and enquiries promptly. Shipping tables (based on destination, weight and speed of service) are filled in by our sellers and provide customers with a good guide as to how much delivery will add to their bill. Customers are provided with seller’s contact details, should they require more precise quotes. We are more than happy to mediate in any disputes arising between sellers and buyers, but serious breaches in our conditions of trading will result in the seller’s immediate exclusion from the database. What are your technical arrangements (in non-technical language, please) to ensure reliability of service? Future growth? Additional services? We have a good technical team dedicated to the maintenance and improvement of the site. Our database is designed to deal with an increasing number of books and customers. We encourage the reporting of bugs and other problems and always do our best to provide solutions as quickly as possible. Our dealers already receive discounts on packaging and book protection materials, as well as the services of an excellent bookbindery. We will be adding new products and services over the coming months. Will you/do you have the capability of taking credit card info for orders?If so, what can you tell us about the safety procedures you have or will have in place to ensure the security of such info? Orders are placed through our secure server. Dealers receive half the card details by email, but have to log in to collect the other half. The email information is not stored anywhere on our server. We believe this to be far safer than sending payment information via two or three emails and also means that hackers will have no joy with the information stored on our server, should they be clever enough to get through our firewall. Do you ever plan to process credit card orders through your database (rather than simply passing on the info to the lister) and, if so, will the lister or buyer bear the processing cost, and how long will it take to get payment to the lister? No plans at present, but a few dealers have asked us to look into this. Do you have any plans for programs associated with your database which would involve anything other than direct contact between seller and buyer? No. Do you have or do you plan to have an “all word search” capability? This will be considered when the database is next upgraded. What search capabilities does your database have now? What is planned for the future? Our advanced search allows searches for: Author Title Publisher Keyword Published Year (from/to) Price (from/to) Signed Books First Edition Books Currency Displayed Searches can also be ordered by author name, title and price (either ascending or descending) On what will you base your listing fees? What fees do you have now or plan to have? Biblion is the only site offering its dealers a choice of either commission or subscription fees. If they chose, dealers can switch from one system to the other on the first day of the month, providing we receive a few days notice. This allows sellers to make the most economical choice according to how well their sales are going. Fee schedule: Subscription 1 – 999 items listed – £17.62 per month or £176.20 per year 1000+ items listed – £29.37 per month or £293.75 per year Commission 11.75% on items actually sold via Biblion (i.e., sales, not orders) All of the above charges include Value Added Tax at 17.5% Do you plan to have or now have your database searched by Addall or Bookfinder or any other mega-search site? Biblion.com is searched by both AddAll and Bookfinder. How do you plan to advertise your database (both to draw listers and buyers)? We advertise in most of the major trade publications in the US and UK. Currently we are investing in search engine promotion via a specialist company. Biblion.com, of course, benefits from all of the widespread display advertising promoting the Mayfair shop and is brought to the prominent attention of the many visitors our shop receives. No big budget extravaganzas, but the larger we grow the more money we will spend on promotion. What background or experience do you or other people involved with your database have that relates to the online book or online book database business? I have been a bookseller for many years and opened the Biblion shop after much discussion with the trade and my customers. My colleague, Sebastian Gray, runs his own I.T. company (ItLab), so we feel that we launched Biblion.com with a good mix of trade experience and technical know-how. However, we are ever conscious of suggestions and comments received from both sellers and buyers and realize that continued improvement is vital to our long-term success. Do you or are you planning to have professional management, bookseller management, or???? No plans What markets (geographical and/or demographic) are you aiming at? Biblion.com initially concentrated on the UK market. However, the internet is global and we soon found dealers from all corners of the world wishing to list their stock with us. The buyers who visit our site are also truly international. What services/features does your database have that you feel sets you apart and/or will ensure the success of your database? Our unique fee schedule (commission or subscription) allows our dealers to get the best value for money according to their circumstances. Our unique upload engine enables our dealers to map their own databases with our own and allow for very simple uploading of stock. Our simple Quick Buy ordering process enables customers to purchase the books they want with the minimum of fuss and safe in the knowledge that their card details will be sent securely. Time saving quick searches of registered wants. We always do our very best to attend to enquiries and problems. Overall, our commitment to Biblion.com is passionate and this provides us with enough enthusiasm and dedication to ensure our longevity. Also, I think the great majority of our customers quite like us! Please tell us anything you’d like about yourself and/or your database, and thank you for participating. Biblion Mayfair: our shop was opened in April 1999. Biblion.com was launched in April 2000. Biblion.com currently has about 500 registered dealers (this figure is growing daily) and over 2.5 million books listed.

By Maria Bustillos, Julie Fauble and Greg Williams On April 27th and 28th, UCLA hosted the 7th annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. As in previous years, the event featured scores of authors (noteworthy and otherwise), signing their works and just strolling around UCLA’s beautiful campus. Attendees could drop in on dozens of lectures, workshops and readings. The festival also featured hundreds of booths, with exhibitors from every aspect of the book industry, new and used bookstores, large and small publishers, well-known and obscure authors, comic books and literary magazines. Virtually any enterprise associated with the printed word had a presence at the Festival, and the IOBA was no exception. The IOBA shared a booth with Popula, and spent a busy weekend passing out flyers, answering questions, recruiting new members and spreading the word to the thousands of people who passed by. Below are the recollections and reminiscences of three IOBA members who volunteered their time and energy to help get the word out. The Festival of Books was such an overwhelmingly positive experience that the IOBA has already scheduled a second outreach event. The IOBA will be exhibiting May 18th and 19th at the Glendale International Book, Print and Paper Fair, (url: http://www.americanbookfairs.com/glendalem02.html ). All members are invited to come out, help the IOBA spread the word to our colleagues in the profession, and meet your fellow IOBA members in person. It’s bound to be a great time, and we’re looking forward to seeing you there. MARIA BUSTILLOS (Popula) We met and chatted with many, many booksellers and interesting (and sometimes bizarre!) collectors. We were offered soup. We met our IOBA colleagues and entirely heroic and worthy fellow volunteers Mary Watanabe and Greg Williams (who looks like one of those really handsome young movie stars, Jason Lee maybe). We had our hands kissed, and later we were all hugged by this other and far weirder guy. We gave out tons of IOBA literature, and signed up new members. We saw George Plimpton. And, (sit down if not seated already)… We met the incomparable Regards, Jeff. I am Not Kidding. Having given little thought to the possibility of meeting inhabitants of heaven until sometime later, I had formed no idea of the physiognomy of my hero. Suffice it to say that Regards, Jeff, in the flesh, had much the same effect on your humble servant as David Bowie did in 1974. My shrieks of sheer unbounded rapture and amazement woke not only the dead, but nearly everyone in the Valley as well. Mary Watanabe had to give me a time out, and later somewhat dryly remarked that I had made the place sound like a Chuck E. Cheese’s (sorry, Mary.) JULIE FAUBLE (Century Books) I can’t believe the size of the event — tons of booths and people. Our booth is sort of out in the hinterlands, but the streams of people going by are constant. It’s a little bit chilly Saturday, with a small threat of rain. I’m frankly appalled. This is L.A. after all, where the sun is supposed to shine nonstop. Besides which, I forgot to pack an appropriate sweater. The weather deters no one from the event, and the people come by in waves. Mary Watanabe is early on the scene, and we arm her with flyers (one designed for dealers, another for consumers called the “Book Buyers Bill of Rights”). Almost no one gets by her without taking one. It takes us a little while to get our patter down, but eventually it starts to flow. We begin by asking people if they buy books on the Internet. A few look at us with horror in their eyes, as if we’d just asked if they eat babies raw. They skitter away from us as quickly as they can. A few answer with a quiet “not yet” and a wary look in their eyes. They’re obviously just waiting for an excuse to be tempted, and we try our best to oblige. We sing the praises of the Internet and assure them that if they go to IOBA member dealers, they’ll have wonderful book-buying experiences. Most, however, answer that they buy online now and then, mentioning Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and a few brave souls answer with a hearty “all the time.” We cheer these folks for their good sense and then quickly tell them all about IOBA, why they should buy from IOBA dealers and mention some of the many ways in which they can deal with sellers directly. A handful of people tell us they sell online, too, and we make certain they know about IOBA and direct them to check out our description definitions and other online resources. Sunday morning, I remembered to bring my business cards. Armed with those and a handful of IOBA brochures, I made some rounds through the booths. My first stop was Roger Gozdecki at The Book Shop. Yowch! What a way to start the day! Roger politely raked me over the coals with some excellent questions, such as “Why should an ABAA member join the IOBA?” Why indeed? Here¹s the answer I gave him (minus all the errs, ums, stutters and stumblings): ABAA members have a vested interest in IOBA’s mission of education for dealers and creating a safer, more stable online marketplace for consumers, which creates a better marketplace for all dealers. All of us have experienced fallout from the influx of dealers who either don’t know or don’t care about professional standards of description or customer service. Bad experiences scare customers out of the marketplace, and even those who buy again are wary, creating more work for the rest of us, in order to overcome their concerns. For the dealers who don’t know better, we can educate them. We can help them be better sellers and in the process make the marketplace better for everyone. We can’t do much about the dealers who don’t care, but we can give consumers the tools to recognize the bad apples, so they can patronize the dealers who will give them the best book-buying experience. That was the most interesting bit of the conversation, or at least the interesting bit that I remember well enough to repeat. Suffice it to say, I survived my grilling, and we parted on a congenial note. After that I visited a few more booths, chatted up a couple more people, looked at lots of books (bought one — an admirable show of restraint, IMO) and wished that I could just attend as a regular consumer and spend as many hours as I wanted wandering about. But no such luck! It was back to the booth and the hordes of people, all eager for more information about buying online (some responded a little too enthusiastically – Maria acquired some interesting admirers!. It was exhausting, but a great experience. GREG WILLIAMS (Greg Williams, Bookseller) I walked to the Festival from my humble Westwood abode, leaving our cat to entertain herself with her paranoid hallucinations and psychotic episodes (our cat is a disturbed individual). It was a cooler, overcast day, the kind about which most Angelenos gripe incessantly, but for which my North Dakota relatives would give their frostbitten right arms. I decided to enter campus from the South, so I could stroll through as much of the Festival grounds as possible on my way to the IOBA booth (a fateful decision, as it turned out…). Entering campus, the Parking Services folks were out in force, performing their daily miracle of directing hundreds of cars into the campus’s 14 or so available parking spaces. I passed the Student Store where people were already lining up for former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden’s appearance several hours hence. I entered the festival grounds proper and traipsed my way through the Dance Building courtyard, up the Janss steps into the famous Royce Hall quad (trust me, you’ve seen it in dozens of movies, TV shows and commercials). Even at this early hour, the Festival was hopping, throngs of people already laden with armfuls of biblio-swag, and lining up to get their books signed by a wide spectrum of authors and personalities (within the space of 5 minutes, I passed booths featuring Ray Bradbury, Michael Connelly and Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek). I crossed over to Schoenberg Plaza, a section where most of the children-oriented booths were located. I shuddered a bit, as the sight of the kids’ area brought up long-repressed memories; one year, Festival organizers had invited the Oscar Mayer weinermobile, and the friendly frankfurter folks had handed out free plastic hot dog-shaped whistles to all the tots in attendance. The resulting, constant high-pitched whistling cacophony was the soundtrack to my nightmares for many months afterwards. Thankfully, however, this year there would be nothing more offensive than Barney singing his innocuous purple-dinosaur claptrap. I had enjoyed my little stroll, but when I finally arrived at the IOBA booth, I learned I had paid a high price indeed; I had missed Regards, Jeff’s descent from Olympus by mere moments. Maria Bustillos was still overcome with the glory of His presence, and Julie Fauble was only now starting to ventilate normally. Alternatively reverent and hysteric, they recounted the visitation, struggling to describe the glory of the divine using our woefully inadequate mortal vocabulary. A sense of calm finally prevailed, and formal introductions were made. I’d corresponded with Maria and Julie previously, and was very happy to finally meet them in person. I was also quite pleased to meet Mary Watanabe of Affordable Books & Collectibles, another IOBA member who had volunteered to help staff the booth. We all quickly fell into a comfortable and enjoyable chattiness, swapping stories and comparing opinions on everything under the sun. I quickly picked up on the hooks Julie, Mary and Maria were employing to lure people to our booth, and in no time, I was out in the thick of it, intercepting folks as they passed by, and herding ’em into the tent. We had a really eclectic mix of people interested in the IOBA. Soon after I arrived, a professor from the UCLA English Department stopped by and started to chat. As it turned out he, taught a class at UCLA on the history of the book, which covered everything from the development of the bookbinders’ craft, to the history of the publishing companies to modern-day bookselling practices. He was particularly interested in used booksellers (both online and B&M), and was extremely keen on checking out the IOBA. As the day progressed, we entertained and enlightened numerous other people. We encountered several booksellers who were glad to learn about us, and were quite excited about joining the organization. There were also many people who seemed excited to meet us for other, although less wholesome reasons; one gentleman extracted several hugs from the ladies present, and even got me to engage in a lingering embrace (the tease…I’m sure he’ll never call). We also got to meet a couple of our colleagues and friends from the Bibliophile list, including Ken Fermoyle (bookseller and writer), who stopped by for a nice chat, and was gracious enough to pose for a photo. As I talked to more and more people, it really struck me that even amongst a crowd of people who had gathered to celebrate their love and appreciation of books, a very large number of them had *never* purchased a book (new or used) online. Even amongst the minority who had, many bought primarily through Amazon or B&N, and hadn’t ever worked directly with the bookseller on the other end of the transaction. As I heard the same responses over and over, I realized that there’s a *huge* untapped customer-base out there, people who love books, people who love to read, but who just need a *little* bit of nudging before they’ll jump into the world of online book buying. It was a real eye-opener for me, and I’m more thankful than ever to be a part of the IOBA, an organization that is actively trying to reach out to these people, to educate, assure and cultivate these potential customers. It was a very pleasant afternoon, and the time passed very quickly. We passed out numerous flyers and talked to a lot of people, and by the time I departed, I felt really good about our efforts to get the word out about the IOBA. Most of all, however, I was very happy to have met Maria, Julie and Mary in person, and I hope that at future IOBA events, I’ll have the opportunity to meet even more of my fellow members.

URL: http://www.gbmbooks.com What is your purpose in starting an online book database (i.e., to help online booksellers, to get a database that does what you think a book database should do, because it’s a good business to be in, all of the above, none of the above, or ????). Global Book Mart, in its new incarnation, is a continuation of our original philosophy and intent in launching Global Book Mart in 1999. We created a book database conceived by booksellers for the express purpose of maintaining an independent database that is not interested in creating a brand name for itself. GBM does not want to position itself between the bookseller and the customer, but instead to be a conduit for customers to find booksellers, and booksellers to attract customers. GBM has always taken the stand that we must remain independent in order to serve our customers. This philosophy was developed from our perspective as booksellers who experienced the early days of online bookselling on Interloc onward, watching the evolution of the book database, with both the good and not-so-good consequences. Is this a long-term commitment on your part? Where do you see yourself and your database in three years? 5 years? This has been a commitment of more than 3 years to date. GBM publicly launched in 1999 with 85 dealers. GBM grew to more than 940 dealers with more than 4.6 million book records by August, 2000. Our hiatus from the online book industry was not voluntary. In August of 2000, we learned that owning your equipment and owning your proprietary programming does not necessarily afford protection from unscrupulous parties. The computer programming firm retained to perform work on GBM demanded that we pay them approximately $187,000 which was not provided for in our contract, or in the alternative, to relinquish to them a controlling interest in GBM, or they would commandeer our equipment (which was physically housed in their facility to have a direct T1 connection), programming and data. These same programmers used our equipment to pirate the GBM database and bookseller data for use on a website they registered, http://www.bookcrawler.net which included the use of all of our proprietary code and copyrighted materials, with the exception of changing the name. We were even told by one of these parties that should GBM booksellers not be willing to contract with their new site, these programmers intended to purchase inventory and duplicate the efforts of booksellers. We consulted our attorney and notified all of our booksellers of these events on August 10, 2000. Within 2 hours of our notifying our booksellers, the programmers physically unplugged our servers and severed communications. We want to again thank our customers who emailed, phoned and faxed our former programmers with cease and desist demands. At this point, our world was turned upside down. In addition to withholding our property, these programmers managed to transfer registration of our URLs to a secondary registration company–which, while recognizing that Leon and I were listed as the owners of those URLs, would not release control of the URLs to us without the written permission of the party who transferred the registrations to them, our programmers, who, in turn, refused to do so. Appeals to Network Solutions failed to resolve the control of the registration. Litigation and 18 months were required before we regained control of our URLs in March 2002. Ultimately, Leon and I have personally lost tens of thousands of dollars, and in order to pursue litigation, and rebuild our personal lives, sold our home and liquidated our book inventory. We immediately commenced legal action against these parties. We are still engaged in that litigation. The defendants were ordered to return all of our property to us. The defendants failed to return our property and were held in contempt. However, the defendants have subsequently admitted in court hearings that they destroyed our equipment, code and other property upon receiving communications from our attorney. The court imposed sanctions upon the defendants, including striking a portion of their court pleadings. The case is awaiting a trial date on damages. We anticipate the trial to be scheduled for sometime this summer. We are rebuilding GBM for the long-term. Our goal is to continue to evolve to meet the needs and desires of booksellers and their customers as those needs and desires change over time. What lister book database inventory programs do you/will you support? GBM will support all book inventory programs. Additionally, as in the past, we will add new formats from individual booksellers on an as requested basis. What are your upload procedures? Deletion procedures? Are “wants” listings available? For sale matches? Are any additions/changes planned? Uploads will be available via FTP (and we will offer a downloadable FTP interface), as well as a custom, onsite upload interface. We will offer a wants listing/matching service for booksellers and customers. What customer service (for both sellers and buyers) do you/will you have? As always, booksellers and customers alike, will be able to contact GBM via email, fax or phone. When you contact customer service, you deal directly with Leon and myself, the owners. The buck stops here. We currently have a feedback option on our site, and will continue to do so. We encourage booksellers and customers to contact us. Will you/do you have any quality (i.e., descriptions, shipping, and/or customer service) standards for your listers? If so, what will be/are the consequences of violating those standards? We have always included bookseller guidelines as a condition of participation with GBM. Should customers experience unsatisfactory transactions, then we encourage them to contact us for investigation. Should a bookseller demonstrate an inability or unwillingness to perform to industry standards, then GBM has the choice of terminating our relationship with that dealer. By the same token, as long-term booksellers, we understand the realities of bookselling and customer relations. As such, we have a realistic understanding of such situations and are hopefully in a position to make reasonable conclusions based on the facts presented to us. What are your technical arrangements (in non-technical language, please) to ensure reliability of service? Future growth? Additional services? We have state-of-the-art equipment (light-years ahead of what we had previously), we have a direct DS3 line (the equivalent of 28 T1 lines) as well as satellite capabilities in the near future. Having direct access ensures the highest level of up-time–subject to the phone lines, and whether a backhoe cuts a line somewhere between here and a particular user. Our equipment is expandable for future growth. Our available capacity allows for nearly exponential growth rates. This also allows advanced services such as website hosting, image hosting, etc. Will you/do you have the capability of taking credit card info for orders? If so, what can you tell us about the safety procedures you have or will have in place to ensure the security of such info? GBM will provide a secure server for the storage of customer credit card information. As before, dealers will have to log on to the GBM secure server to retrieve that information in order to process their credit card sales transactions. Do you ever plan to process credit card orders through your database (rather than simply passing on the info to the lister) and, if so, will the lister or buyer bear the processing cost, and how long will it take to get payment to the lister? No. Do you have any plans for programs associated with your database which would involve anything other than direct contact between seller and buyer? No. Do you have or do you plan to have an “all word search” capability? Yes, it is called ‘exact’ match in our search parameters and works in multiple fields, as well as partial word(s), starting and ending search features as well. What search capabilities does your database have now? What is planned for the future? Search parameters include title, author, price, keywords, publisher, ISBN, (or any combination thereof) all of which can be sorted by those variables or in reverse order. On what will you base your listing fees? What fees do you have now or plan to have? We will have a flat monthly listing fee, without a restriction on the number of records. We will offer additional services, such as website hosting, image hosting, etc, which will be optional for booksellers. Do you plan to have or now have your database searched by Addall or Bookfinder or any other mega-search site? Yes. How do you plan to advertise your database (both to draw listers and buyers)? Our philosophy on advertising has not changed. You won’t see full-page ads for GBM in the New York Times. Our experience has been that advertising and networking that builds word-of-mouth is the most successful. As before, we will pursue online links, advertising and networking which successfully drives online buyers to a site. We will also focus on building word of mouth via sources that book buyers will encounter. Finally, networking with booksellers, and promotion of use of GBM for their customers will be pursued, including booksellers who are not online sellers. We will continue to offer bookmarks, mugs, shirts, etc. to our sellers and customers. What background or experience do you or other people involved with your database have that relates to the online book or online book database business? Leon and Lisa Martin have managed and owned open bookstores since 1991, and have been online booksellers since 1996. We made the jump to database owners in 1999. In other business and professional experience: Leon has previously worked in retail and service management, owned and operated a hazardous materials cleanup and excavation business, and owned a computer hardware business; Lisa is an attorney, having practiced in the area of employment law, as well as many years in public interest law. Do you or are you planning to have professional management, bookseller management, or???? We will continue to own and operate GBM. Leon and Lisa personally manage GBM operations. That will not change. Period. What markets (geographical and/or demographic) are you aiming at? As always, GBM is focused upon cultivation of a global clientele for our booksellers and to promote the globalization of the online book buying community, including our multi-lingual features. What services/features does your database have that you feel sets you apart and/or will ensure the success of your database? GBM has always been an innovative, independent book database. That attitude and forward-looking perspective continues today. We will offer the services we had before, but now with a faster site. Additionally, during our hiatus, we have had the opportunity to reflect upon the state of the online book database and new projects are in development.

Glendale, CA International Book, Print and Paper Fair May 18 & 19, 2002 American Book Fairs, Inc. will hold the Glendale International Book, Print and Paper Fair on May 18 & 19, 2002, at the Glendale Civic Auditorium, 1401 No. Verdugo Rd., Glendale, California. The hours are Saturday 10 AM – 6 PM, Sunday 11 AM – 4 PM. 110 fine local, national and international dealers will exhibit and sell collectible, antiquarian and rare books, maps and prints. For more information: Phone: 1-480-860-2400, Fax: 1-888-4801-8070, URL: http://www.americanbookfairs.com. BE SURE TO STOP BY THE IOBA TABLE AND SAY “HELLO”! COLORADO SPRINGS ANNUAL BOOK SEMINAR – 2002 The Out-of-Print & Antiquarian Book Market Seminar–an intensive one week program for booksellers and collectors at all levels of experience–will be held again this year at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, CO. Now in its 24th year, the seminar has graduated more than 2,000 participants, many of whom have become prominent figures in the antiquarian book world. The seminar opens on Sunday, August 4, 2002 and concludes on Friday, August 9, 2002. The curriculum has been constantly updated to reflect the important changes that have taken place in the antiquarian and out-of-print book world in the past decade. An all-star faculty with a combined experience of many years in all phases of bookselling will preside over sessions covering such topics as pricing and description of antiquarian books and manuscripts, the auction process, internet bookselling, book scouting, ethics of the book trade, book repairs and restoration, operating a used book store, book fairs, the economics of the book trade, and more. Enrollment is limited. For more information, please contact Kathy Lindeman, Coordinator, at (719)473-6634, or visit the seminar’s web site at: http://www.bookseminars.com where on-line applications can be filed. N.B. ABAA Woodburn Scholarships for CO Seminar DAVID GREGOR’S BOOKSELLING WORKSHOP, MAY 19, 2002, PHOENIX, AZ The third road appearance of Book Seminars International’s presentation of David Gregor’s Strategic Bookselling Workshop and Book Collecting for Fun & Profit programs will take place May 18th & 19th at the Crowne Plaza Phoenix Downtown, located at 100 North First Street. If you want to learn how to improve your book business and increase profits, then you’ll want to join us for our one-of-a-kind book collecting and bookselling programs. Our events in Boston brought over 50 booksellers and collectors together in a spirited exchange of fresh perspectives, and we would like to share the same dynamic material with you. Quite a few attendees in my seminars who have also taken the week-long program in Colorado and they all tell me that the two programs cover very different material and compliment one another. The Strategic Bookselling Workshop (Sunday May 19, 9am-5pm) is for new and experienced booksellers, brick & mortar and Internet only, who want to increase their sales by learning the 12 truths of profit building, developing a niche, refining a profitable customer base, transitioning your business and much more. If you (or an employee) need to more accurately describe editions and stock condition, understand the collectible book market, learn how to research books and more accurately assess values, Book Collecting for Fun & Profit will help you in those skill areas. A one-year subscription to Firsts Magazine is included with the collecting program. The cost for each program is $195. Programs are limited to pre-paid attendees. No walk-ups will be admitted. To learn more about these programs, visit http://www.gregorbooks.com, email them at: seminars@gregorbooks.com, or call them at 206.937.6223. For 2002, Book Seminars International will also be delivering programs in Atlanta, Denver, Santa Monica, and Seattle. BOOKTRAKKER: NEW REVISION COMING By Andy Gutterman URL: http://www.booktrakker.com/default.htm A new version of BookTrakker is on its way. The largest change is compatibility with any user in any country, along with some small, added features: User editing of Edition, Printing and Publisher, allowing additions and deletions to the lists; Recursive Hit Lists, where you can use the results of a Hit List to create a new list; plus the addition of a couple of Actions on Hit lists to enable changing the Book/DJ fields globally and to Append data to the end of selected fields. Some obvious bugs have been fixed, and a few other cosmetic changes were made, such as menu and mouse driven editing features. A major overhaul is planned after this updated version is released, which should be by early June, if not sooner. To apply for an ABAA-sponsored scholarship to the Out-of-Print & Antiquarian Book Market Seminar at Colorado Springs, Colorado (dates: Aug. 4-9): Write a one-page letter about your interest in books and why you in particular should be awarded such. Send it to: The Woodburn Fund, c/o ABAA, 20 West 44th St., 4th Fl., NY, NY 10036 The deadline for the letter is July 1, 2002