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Awards for mystery novels and their authors abound! Probably the best known, and most coveted, of those given in the United States are the Edgar All Poe Awards. Chosen by members of the Mystery Writers of America since 1945, they are more commonly known as the “Edgars,” The Macavity Awards differ from most mystery novel honors in two important respects. First, readers select the nominees and winners, not a committee or professionals in the field. Each year, members of Mystery Readers International (MRI) nominate and vote for their favorite mysteries in four categories. MRI is the largest mystery fan/reader organization in the world. It is open to all mystery fans, including collectors, critics, editors, publishers and writers. First and foremost, however, all are mystery readers. Second, the Macavity name obviously is a tad unusual. Most other awards are named for people (Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, Anthony Boucher, Canadian Crime Writers Arthur Ellis Awards, et al) or bear titles like the Shamus or Dagger Awards, The Macavity Awards, however, are named for the “mystery cat” of T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Started by Janet A. Rudolph, Berkeley, California, MRI now has members in all 50 of the United States and 18 foreign countries. Members have been voting to select Macavity winners each year since 1987. Here is the list of 2003 awards (for books published during 2002) by category, with title, author and publisher. Nominees are also listed in each category. Best Mystery Novel: Winter and Night by S.J. Rozan (St. Martin’s Minotaur). She beat out serious competition as the list of the other nominees indicates: Nine by Jan Burke (Simon & Schuster) Savannah Blues by Mary Kay Andrews (Harper Collins) City of Bones by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown) Jolie Blon’s Bounce by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster) Best First Mystery Novel: In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming (St. Martin’s Minotaur). Other nominees: A Valley To Die For by Radine Trees Nehring (St. Kitts Press) The Blue Edge of Midnight by Jonathon King (Dutton) The Distance by Eddie Muller (Scribner) The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Crime Fiction edited by Mike Ashley (Carroll & Graf The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir by Eddie Muller (Overlook Press) Intent to Sell: Marketing the Genre Novel by Jeff Marks (Deadly Alibi Press) Best Mystery Short Story: “Voice Mail” by Janet Dawson (Scam and Eggs, Five Star). Other nominees: “Boot Scoot” by Diana Deverell (AHMM, October 2002) “The Adventure of the Rara Avis“ by Carolyn Wheat (Murder, My Dear Watson, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon Lellenberg & Daniel Stashower; Carroll & Graf) “An Empire’s Reach” by Brendan DuBois (AHMM, Nov 2002) “Too Many Cooks” by Marcia Talley (Much Ado About Murder, edited by Anne Perry, Berkley Prime Crime) “Bible Belt” by Toni L.P. Kelner (EQMM, June 2002) Winners in 2002 were: Best Mystery Novel: Folly by Laurie R. King (Bantam) Best First Mystery Novel: Open Season by C. J. Box (G.P. Putnam’s) Best Bio/Critical Mystery Work: Writing the Mystery: A Start to Finish Guide for Both Novice and Professional by G. Miki Hayden (Intrigue) Best Mystery Short Story: “The Abbey Ghosts” by Jan Burke (AHMM, Jan 2001) Notable nominees and award winners in previous years include: Blood Work by Michael Connelly (Best Mystery Novel of 1999) Trunk Music by Michael Connelly (1998 Nominee) Killing Floor by Lee Child (1998 Nominee) Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich (1997 Nominee) Under the Beetle’s Cellar by Mary Willis Walker (Best Mystery Novel of 1996) The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly (1996 Nominee) She Walks These Hills by Sharyn McCrumb (Best Mystery Novel of 1995) The Sculptress by Minette Walters (Best Mystery Novel of 1994) A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman (Best Mystery Novel of 1989)

In mid-July, BiblioDirect unveiled a new look that improves upon the basic site design it has had since its inception a little over a year ago. Here’s what is new or improved at http://www.BiblioDirect.com — Softer, easier-on-the-eyes colors. — The basic search is now located in a more traditional spot on the page. — Easier to find search tips that are written for the more casual book buyer. — “Today in History” is back with interesting tidbits about the day along with literary births and deaths. — Information (address, email, phone, shipping terms, return policy, and payment options) about each of our dealers is now easier to access — A new “Now Featured” segment allows us to focus on a particular book, a specific author, or a general subject and lead buyers to more information about all the items in the BiblioDirect database that tie into the featured topic. Effective June 1, 2003, BiblioDirect reduced its monthly fees for dealers and added a very modest service charge. It guarantees dealers that orders through the site must be at least twice the monthly fee or only the service fee will be assessed. Dealer information is available at http://www.bibliodirect.com/dealer_info.php and a dealer application at http://www.bibliodirect.com/dealer_app.php BiblioDirect, with quality books from quality dealers, continues to attract more and more quality buyers. Bibliophile Books, Inc. Quality books from quality dealers at http://www.BiblioDirect.com 111 East 6th St. Pittsburg, KS 66762-3916 (620) 231-0999 #databases

http://www.thebookcellar.com The BookCellar.com is pleased to announce the launch of our new dealer site http://www.TBCdealers.com a database for used, rare, and out-of-print books. We are dedicated to bringing booksellers and book-buyers around the globe together under one high-powered search engine. We offer FREE listings with no setup cost and no obligations. You only pay when you sell. We list your books on our site and buy them from you at a 20% discount. We’ve been listing dealer’s books for a few years now but have just recently gone live with our Agent Intranet Site and are a privately owned company. As book sales are slowing at the larger sites we offer an additional means of sales with no monthly fee. Create an account to list your books. No monthly listing fee or set up costs. Instructions are covered throughout the site regarding upload and order processing. Your books will appear on our front-end site within 4-24 hours (following your initial upload). We’ve taken the best functionalities and features of the larger sites and brought them all together. We offer simple navigation and a high-powered engine-delivering search results in roughly 1 second, the fastest book engine online. If you are looking for another online medium to sell books and are interested in listing your books on our site please contact us at cs@thebookcellar.com We now invite you to join as a BookCellar Agent and increase your online sales. We look forward to continuing to serve the online bookselling community and welcome the opportunity to work with you. Brian Serpone President and CEO The BookCellar.com LLC/ http://www.thebookcellar.com #bookcellarcom

This is the second of two articles on notable events, books, and ephemera of the 19th century suffrage movement. The first article is in the IOBA Standard, Volume III, Number 4. Both articles are just overviews. I’ve tried to emphasize the most often repeated stories and the major books and, very cursorily, the ephemera of the movement. Although much new material continues to be written, The History of Woman Suffrage is still the main source of information. The period from the late 1870’s through the early twentieth century was a comparatively quiet time in the history of the suffrage movement. As passage of a federal amendment seemed increasingly distant, many suffrage workers turned to the approach favored by conservatives, campaigns for passage of state amendments. These campaigns were time-consuming and, often, frustrating; by the end of the nineteenth century, only four western states, led by Wyoming, had actually enfranchised women. The first of fifty-six state votes on women’s suffrage was in Kansas in 1867, and legislatures refused to allow referenda almost five hundred times. These efforts were organizing and unifying events for suffrage supporters, but they were draining and expensive as well. (1) Two dramatic events particularly captured public interest during the 1870’s and are important in the history of the suffrage movement: Susan B. Anthony’s arrest for voting in the presidential election of 1872 and the suffrage demonstrations at the 1776 Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia. Other groups of women attempted to register in the same election as the one in which Anthony so famously succeeded. The only successful group was the Rochester, New York group of fifteen women led by Anthony, but others who attempted to vote included Sojourner Truth, probably the best known of the African American suffrage workers, Isabella Beecher Hooker, and approximately thirty-five more women in Rochester as well as scattered groups and individuals elsewhere. Although the legal case was somewhat tortuous, the basis of the suffrage argument was simply that voting was a right. Women had not been specifically excluded in the constitution and the amendments giving African-American men the right to vote first introduced the word male as a requirement for voting. In a speech first delivered on January 16, 1873, (between Anthony’s 1872 arrest and her trial in the spring of 1873) at a NWSA meeting in Washington, Anthony presented her case, that voting was both a natural and a constitutional right. The text of the speech was reported and a revised version appears in Anthony’s published account of the trial. (2) Anthony, the women who voted with her, and the election inspectors who allowed them to vote were arrested on November 18. At a subsequent examination before United States Commissioner, William C. Storrs, prosecution and defense agreed that the decision arrived at in Anthony’s case would apply to all the women. The election inspectors were tried separately — and convicted. They were the only defendants jailed as a result of the illegal votes. At Anthony’s trial, held in the spring of 1873 in Canandaigua, NY, about forty miles from Rochester, Anthony was found guilty in a directed verdict (it was a juried trial but the jury was not allowed to deliberate). The penalty was ten days in jail or a $100 fine. Anthony refused to pay the fine but was never jailed, perhaps because that would have enabled her to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. News coverage of the trial strongly criticized the Judge’s refusal to allow the jury to deliberate. In 1874 the Supreme Court ruled, in a landmark case, Minor vs. Happersett, that “the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone.” A complete record of Anthony’s trial was published and paid for by her under the rather daunting title, An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting, at the Presidential Election in November, 1872. Three thousand copies of the paper-covered booklet were printed by the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle in 1874. As usual, Anthony carefully noted the cost, $700. At least one copy, inscribed by Anthony to one of the women with whom she voted, has turned up in recent years, but original printings are rare. Reprints of the trial proceedings are available. According to Anthony, there were also 5,000 copies made of Judge Selden’s argument on the Habeas Corpus “which she scattered broadcast.” I have not seen a copy of that. (3) By 1776, suffrage leaders were ready for another battle —- this over the Fourth of July Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia. The Centennial was a national event of great importance and, to the suffrage leaders who were excluded from the proceedings, it was an opportunity to advance the cause. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage worked long and hard to produce a Declaration of the Rights of Women to be presented at the Philadelphia celebration and asked repeatedly to be on the program. Turned down, they decided on other action. Stanton and Lucretia Mott (then in her eighties) decided to hold a competing meeting for women’s rights in a Philadelphia Unitarian Church. Anthony, a “spinster,” was able to rent the space which Mott, a married woman, could not. They also pursued a more militant plan. After repeatedly requesting to be on the Fourth of July program, Anthony, Matilda Joslin Gage and three other women obtained four seats on the platform (using at least one press pass from Anthony’s brother, Daniel) but were denied permission to be on the program. After the reading of the Declaration of Independence, they rose from their seats, handed a copy of their Declaration to the acting vice president of the United States, and walked out scattering copies of their Declaration as they went. Anthony read the Declaration from a musicians’ platform outside and additional copies were distributed to the crowd. Few copies of that Declaration have survived although the text is in the History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III. Joslyn Gage and Anthony’s militance in this instance is sometimes seen as foreshadowing the media-oriented militance of 20th century suffragists. Lucy Stone, who was part of the convention organized by Cady Stanton and Mott, apparently disapproved, but said the action would “no doubt go down in the history books” and twentieth century biographer of the movement, Rheta Childe Dorr, pointed to it as proof that Anthony, not Emmeline Pankhurst, “invented militant feminism.” (4) Two interesting paper items came out of the suffrage demonstration in Philadelphia, but an item promised in the advance publicity by NWSA is especially interesting because it never appeared. In order to pay for the headquarters, Gage, Stanton, and Anthony offered, as a premium, a history of the women’s rights movement to anyone donating $5. The three had long discussed writing the history and anticipated producing a several hundred-page pamphlet. The pamphlet was never written and the short history eventually turned into the six-volume History of the Woman Suffrage Movement. Anthony, always scrupulous about keeping promises, eventually sent each of the donors a $15 set of the history. (5) Work didn’t actually begin on the history until 1880 although Anthony sent trunks and boxes of materials to Stanton’s home in Tenafly, NJ in 1876. When the work did begin, in Tenafly, it turned out to be an enormously more demanding task than the authors had anticipated. According to Anthony “the task loomed up in an appalling manner.” 5 Stanton did most of the writing with Anthony providing history and factual information and Gage contributing some sections. Anthony was also publisher (a pattern established when they produced their short-lived suffrage newspaper, The Revolution) and was critic and provider of factual information. They requested information and records from others active in the movement and, though most people responded, Lucy Stone refused to contribute because she objected to their “attempt to write the history” of the AWSA. (6) Anthony spent much time looking for a publisher. According to one biographer, Anthony took trips to NY as early as 1877 to look for a publisher. (7). The subject was unpopular and the books large and expensive. According to the Life and Work, the portraits of suffrage leaders (steel engravings) cost $126 apiece, an amount which some women paid themselves. Anthony paid for those who were unable to pay. The publisher finally found, Fowler & Wells, best known for their publications on phrenology, released Volume I in May of 1881 and Volume 2 in 1882. Volume 3 was held up due to lack of money. In 1884 Anthony inherited a little over $24,000 from an estate (Lucy Stone inherited a like amount), and work on volume 3 began. It was completed in December, 1885 and the book was copyrighted and published in 1886. At that time Anthony bought the rights to volumes 1 and 2 from Fowler and Wells. She also bought out Stanton and Gage’s rights, and volume 3, along with a reprinting of volumes 1 and 2, was printed by Charles Mann of Rochester. Stanton, Anthony, and Gage held the original copyrights for volumes 1 and 2, but later printings show only Anthony as the copyright holder. The Fowler and Wells printings of volumes 1 and 2 are, of course, first printings and are quite scarce. Anthony’s 1886/1887 reprints, also scarce, are often mistaken for first printings. After Volume 3 was completed, Stanton wearied of the project and volume 4, which lists Anthony as first author, was edited and largely written by Ida Husted Harper, Anthony’s biographer. It was published in 1902, four years before Anthony’s death. Volumes 5 and 6, edited and written by Harper, were published in 1922, two years after the Nineteenth Amendment, enabling women all over the county to vote, was ratified. Anthony gave copies of the early volumes to libraries, schools and individuals. They are often inscribed by her, often briefly, but sometimes with quite personalized and interesting inscriptions. One of three copies inscribed to novelist and reformer Albion Tourgee says, in part “In memory of his truthful portrayal of facts in Fools Errand and Bricks without Straw at the close of the war…his Sincere Friend and Coworker Susan B. Anthony.” The inscription is dated 1893. That copies of the books were available for quite some time is indicated by a listing for the first four volumes in a 1911 NAWSA (National and American Woman Suffrage Association) catalogue, which also listed all three volumes of The Life and Works of SBA. Anthony had distributed many copies of both and willed the remaining copies to NAWSA. The Life and Works of SBA, written by Ida Husted Harper, is both the official biography of Anthony and an invaluable reference. Anthony met Harper, a professional journalist, during the California suffrage campaign and persuaded her to move to Rochester and live at the Anthony home, promising her that the biography would be completed in a year. Work began in March of 1897. Anthony’s estimate of the length of the biography proved to be optimistic—-the first draft turned out to be much longer than expected and had to be cut. Anthony, Harper, and a typist/secretary, working together, completed the work in 1898 and sent the two volumes to the publisher, Bobbs Merrill. A third volume, written by Mrs. Harper, was published posthumously. Unfortunately for later historians, much of the original source material was burned after use. Ads promised “this is the only authentic biography of her that ever can be written, as the letters and documents will not be accessible to other historians.” Anthony also insisted that “letters and documents that reflected badly on others must not be included.” (8) Mrs. Harper, who had expected the work to be complete with the second volume, was almost immediately persuaded by Anthony to start work on volume 4 of the History of Woman Suffrage. Although The History of Woman Suffrage is the primary source for 19th century suffrage history, two other collectible works should be mentioned: Stanton’s very controversialWoman’s Bible, and her autobiographical Eighty Years and More, an informal collection of reminiscences and personal anecdotes intended, in part, according to biographer Elizabeth Griffith, to counter some of the very bad publicity resulting from the publication of the Woman’s Bible. (9) Part I of the Woman’s Bible, published in November, 1895, by the European Publishing Company in New York, consisted of commentaries written by eight of twenty-two women on the “revising committee,” a misnomer since they did not revise the Bible but rather commented on selected verses. (9) Part II was published in 1898. Despite Susan B. Anthony’s pleas to the contrary, a resolution disavowing the Woman’s Bible was adopted at the 1896 NAWSA convention, a victory for conservative leaders Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt. The day of the ultras (the radical suffrage wing led by Anthony and Stanton), was seemingly over. “By the last decade of the nineteenth century, woman suffrage had become respectable…a new generation of conservative women came into the suffrage movement to achieve the victory that the Stantons and Anthonys had made possible.” (10) Stanton’s autobiographical Eighty Years and More was, according to biographer Kerr, her “apologia” intended to create an image of herself as “benign, nurturing, good-humored…” downplaying both personal and political conflicts and the reality of an often irritating, radical, charismatic but demanding leader. (10) A conservative time in the movement had arrived. NWSA and AWSA had merged in 1890 and become NAWSA, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, with Stanton as President and Anthony as Vice-President. The movement had, by this time, arrived at such respectability that in 1892 the three leaders, Stone, Anthony and Stanton were invited to tea at the White House by first lady Lavinia Scott Harrison. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most of the rights for which women had fought, including the right of married women to own property and to keep their own wages, the right to an education, and to enter a profession, had been won. A federal amendment giving women the right to vote in federal elections remained elusive and the traditional and, by this time, rather conservative women’s suffrage association, was putting much of its energy into the campaigns for the vote on a state-by-state basis. Out of these state campaigns came mountains of paper ammunition including pamphlets, fliers, postcards, broadsides and posters. Although state campaigns continued during the twentieth century, younger women formed the National Women’s Party, led by Alice Paul, Harriot Stanton Blatch, and others who were impatient with the lack of progress toward a federal amendment and adopted increasingly militant tactics in their battle for a federal suffrage amendment: picketing, parades in Washington, and partisan political action. These ultimately resulted in the most violent phase of the revolution, the period between 1912 and 1919 when the 19th Amendment granting women the vote was passed. But that’s another story. (1) Jablonski, T. “Female Opposition The Anti-Suffrage Campaign” in Jean H. Baker, editor, Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited) (NY: Oxford University Press, 2001). (2) Anthony, Susan B. An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting, at the Presidential Election in November, 1872. (Rochester: Democrat & Chronicle, 1874). (3) Harper, Ida Husted. The Life and Works of Susan B. Anthony, Volume 1. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1899). p. 446. (4) Dorr, Rheta Childe. Susan B. Anthony The Woman Who Changed the Mind of a Nation. (NY: AMS Press, 1970). Reprint of 1928 edition. p 283. (5) Harper, Ida Husted. p. 475. (6) Barry, Kathleen. Susan B. Anthony a Biography. (NY: New York University Press, 1988). p 272. (7) Anthony, Katharine. Susan B. Anthony Her Personal History and Her Era. (NY: Doubleday, 1954.) p. 341. (8) Huth, Mary. From a talk delivered at the Susan B. Anthony House in 2002. (9) Kraditor, Aileen S. The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement. (NY: Columbia University Press, 1965) p. 86. (10) Griffith, Elisabeth. In Her Own Right The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. (NY: Oxford University Press, 1984) p. 207 Primary Sources Anthony, Susan B. An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting, at the Presidential Election in November, 1872. Gordon, Ann D., Editor. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Two volumes have been published: Volume I: In the School of Anti-Slavery, 1840 to 1866and Volume 2: Against an Aristocracy of Sex, 1866 – 1873. Part of a massive project from Rutgers headed by Gordon, these two volumes include letters, diary entries, speeches and articles. Wonderful notes go along with the entries. Harper, Ida Husted. The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. The first two volumes were written during Susan B. Anthony’s life, based on her records, and with her active assistance. They were published in 1898 and constitute her “authorized” biography. The third volume was published in 1908, two years after Anthony’s death. Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Eighty Years and More, 1815 – 1897. Stanton’s autobiography was first published in 1898. The most recent edition includes an Introduction by Ellen Carol DuBois and an Afterword by Ann D. Gordon, which add current scholarship and recent interpretation of Stanton’s work. Stanton, Elizabeth Cady; Anthony, Susan B.; Gage, Matilda Joslin; and Harper, Ida Husted. The History of Woman Suffrage. The six volumes were published between 1881 and 1922. The first three volumes are by Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, Volume 4 is by Anthony and Harper, and Volumes 5 and 6 are by Harper. They have been reprinted a number of times and are also available on CD-ROM. Secondary Sources Baker, Jean H. Votes for Women The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited. An excellent collection of articles on topics relating to the suffrage movement which had not been much explored. Barry, Kathleen. Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist. Published in 1988, this is the most recent biography of Anthony. Earlier biographies by Alma Lutz, Kathleen Anthony and Rheta Childe Dorr are, unfortunately, out of print. Barry’s is the most scholarly biography; Anthony’s is quite complete and very readable. Dorr, Rheta Childe. Susan B. Anthony The Woman Who Changed the Mind of a Nation. Griffith, Elizabeth. The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This most recent and comprehensive biography of Stanton was published in 1984. Harper, Judith. Susan B. Anthony: A Biographical Companion. This 1998 alphabetical reference includes entries on all the people and events of the suffrage and other reform movements with which Anthony was involved and is an invaluable “quick” reference. Kraditor, Aileen. The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890 – 1920. Classic analysis of the philosophy and tactics of the leaders of the movement. Rakow, Lana F. and Kramarae, Cheris. The Revolution in Words Righting Women 1868 – 1871. Excerpts and analysis of Stanton and Anthony’s suffrage paper. By: Martha Kelly Gutenberg Books gtbooks@frontiernet.net #collecting

The new literary prize, officially titled the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, will be sponsored by the Stanford University Libraries in partnership with the William Saroyan Foundation. Aimed at encouraging new or emerging writers rather than established authors, it will recognize a newly published work of fiction or memoir with a purse of $12,300. The Saroyan Writing Prize (the monicker which I suspect it will be most commonly used) will be awarded every other year, with January 31, 2003 set as deadline for entries in the first competition. Entries are limited to works published in English in book form during calendar 2002 and available for purchase by the general public. Complete information, including entry forms and rules, are available at this website: http://saroyanprize.stanford.edu “As a newcomer to the publishing world, the Saroyan Writing Prize has no track record,”says Michael A. Keller, Stanford Librarian and Stanford University Press publisher. “But our hope is that over time it will join the ranks of notable literary awards and prizes. It was established both to fulfill William Saroyan’s expressed desire to encourage other writers and to fulfill the Foundation’s mission to draw attention to Saroyan’s works and legacy.” Stanford was the logical choice to cosponsor the award since it holds the Saroyan Archive, and Keller adds that the university sees the Writing Prize as a means “to participate in the book arts, to focus on writing in general and Saroyan’s writing in particular and to place Stanford’s archival collections in the public eye.” Perhaps it will also draw some attention to Standford’s Professional Publishing Course, a unique and outstanding program held every summer at The Farm in Palo Alto. “We are currently making plans to hold the award ceremony for the Prize in conjunction with next summer’s Professional Publishing Course,” reports Holly Brady, executive director of that program. I can attest to the high quality and value of this course, thanks to a $5000 education grant I received upon taking early retirement from my “day job” in 1989. I blew the windfall on the Stanford course, a 15-day concentrated “boot camp” with notable, often distinguished, instructors from the “real worlds” of book and magazine publishing. It was probably the most interesting and valuable educational experience of my life. My only regret is that I didn’t attend it years earlier!

URL: http://www.Bibliopoly.com (and others) What was your purpose in starting an online book database? Bibliopoly belongs to Bernard Quaritch Ltd., an antiquarian bookshop in London, established over 150 years ago. Quaritch had set up an internal database in the early 1980s to administer and hold catalogue descriptions of its own stock. This database proved useful in catalogue production and in answering customers’ questions. Quaritch, with a staff of about 30, is divided into nine departments, each of which specialises in a topic or range of topics. Books, however, do not restrict themselves to a single topic. The book of an explorer to Australia might have botanical content and be of navigational interest. The custom-built Quaritch database catered for this through a coding system that allowed several different subject codes to accompany a stock item. We could also enter onto our database that the binding or printing or illustration of a book was particularly fine, and always entered (unless this information was unavailable) the name of its publisher, the date of publication and the town it was printed in. We also entered the language of the book and thus could search for books written in a particular language. When we first came across communal book databases on the internet, we found they lacked many features of our internal system. This was to be expected; they had been developed for a different market, that of in-print books or out-of-print second-hand books. In that market, customers do not require the wealth of information demanded by collectors of rare books. Nor, looked at from the dealer’s viewpoint, is the profit to be made on the sale of a relatively inexpensive book adequate to defray the cost of extracting, which may require research, storing and displaying such information. The traditional sales tool of the antiquarian dealer has been a printed catalogue in which each item is professionally described; the technical part of the description includes some of the information mentioned above and is usually accompanied by a text explaining the merits of the book in terms of edition, condition, content and other circumstance. A communal database brings together the inventory of a number of dealers who thus benefit from the public interest a single dealer’s site is unlikely to generate. If people want a cauldron they go to the street of the copper-beaters. As Quaritch itself was effectively a small community of specialist antiquarian booksellers, our experience seemed relevant to the specification for a larger community of a website which followed the cataloguing traditions of our trade. Bibliopoly is that specification. But it also includes facilities – the digital holding and transmission of images in colour, for example – that have not long been widely available. One of the features left out of account on the sites we looked at was language. London is a very international city; English-speaking, it is also European and its booksellers welcome the frequent visits they receive from Continental colleagues and collectors, whose interest may concentrate on books written in their own languages. Our idea was to provide a website on which dealers from the Anglo-Saxon world and from the main countries of Continental Europe might all list books, catalogued in their own languages but so entered onto the data-base that they could be found by a searcher using any one of five. Bibliopoly was designed to provide the search facilities we had found valuable for our catalogue production and sales, facilities which matched the traditional information requirements of the rare and antiquarian book market, and to be of use to people working in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Is this a long-term commitment on your part? Where do you see yourself and your database in 3 or 5 years? Yes it is a long-term commitment. Further facilities seem likely to be added within five years. What book database inventory programs do you support? In theory we can accommodate any database formats. However, for our search machinery to function effectively we do require an appropriate level of delimitation in the data uploaded. For example, book data that does not have a separate imprint field (or separate fields for place and date of publication, publisher or printer) excludes itself from any Bibliopoly search, such as the important date-range search, which uses imprint-related criteria. What are your upload procedures? Deletion procedures? Are “wants” listings available? For sale matches? Are any additions/changes planned? Our on-line inventory management includes an upload facility which transfers data from the bookseller’s computer to ours by way of an ‘add’ file, ‘delete’ file, or ‘ purge’ file, as the bookseller wishes. Booksellers can also edit and delete individual records from their Bibliopoly inventory on-line. At present we do not have ” wants” listings. What customer service (for both buyers and sellers) do you have? No service for buyers, as we have no e-commerce function. We do our best to be helpful to dealers who list their books on Bibliopoly; this involves, inter alia, the provision of multilingual technical support, advice on data-formatting – a service for which there is considerable demand — and help with hosting images etc. Do you have any quality standards for your listers? If so, what will be the consequences of violating those standards? We accept all members of any ILAB-LILA affiliated bookseller association and booksellers recommended to us as professionally reliable by at least two existing Bibliopoly dealers. These conditions should ensure a proper standard of accurate cataloguing. We retain full discretionary power to remove a dealer from the site and would not hesitate to use this power if we thought the dealer guilty of improper or unprofessional conduct. What are your technical arrangements (in non-technical language, please) to ensure reliability of service? Future growth? Additional services? Bibliopoly runs on a server pair, each with multiple RAID-configured hard-drives. RAID configuration means that failure of a single hard-drive will not cause the system to fail. Server connections to the major internet backbones are via multiple DS-3 lines so that if one backbone goes down, we still maintain excellent connectivity through the others. The main server delivers data to the public while the secondary server indexes – in this way there is no degradation of performance during a long indexing procedure (as we allow ‘ any word’ searches our indexes are large). Our daily back-ups are on the secondary server, so that in the case of catastrophic failure of the main server, we can switch immediately to the secondary. The latest addition to our technical services was the recently introduced inventory export facility. Using this our dealers can export their inventory, in a variety of formats, to any FTP server they choose, e.g. ftp.abebooks.com. Another important service is provided by http://www.polyBiblio.com which gives an individual website to each Bibliopoly book in html format so that a dealer may send his description of one or more books to a customer, or prepare on-line catalogues, etc. There is an ancillary benefit in that these individual book websites are sometimes found by the big search-engines. Do you have the capability of taking credit card info for orders? No. We have no e-commerce facility of any sort. Buyers must themselves make contact, and agree paying arrangements, with dealers. Do you ever plan to process credit cards? No. Well at least not at present. Of course Quaritch processes listing fees from dealers who wish to pay by credit card. Do you have any plans for programs associated with your database that would involve anything other than direct contact between buyer and seller? No. Do you have or plan to have an ” all word search” capability? Yes. We have an ‘any word’ search as part of our main search mechanism. This searches every word in the database, including all keywords. What search capabilities does your database have now? What is planned for the future? Our answers to the questions above apart from the first question have been fairly short. This answer will be long. For convenience it is divided into two parts. The first on Search Criteria. The second Linguistic. Search Criteria People who buy in-print or out-of-print books usually know the name of the book or of the author they want; this is less frequently the case with antiquarian books. Here the customer may ask a dealer to show him ‘something nice’; the dealer, knowing the customer’s interest, will produce books that respond to it. Can something like that happen at long distance, and without prior personal acquaintance? Bibliopoly is dedicated to proving that it can. There is a trade-off. Both the customer, in exchange for being able to see ‘something nice’ at any hour of the day or night, from any location in the world, and the antiquarian bookseller, in exchange for being able to offer his inventory to someone nine thousand miles away on a Sunday, need to be specific. The customer must specify on a search page what he intends by ‘nice book.’ The bookseller must so mark his books for upload, either by using a code, or through key-words, that a customer can find them. Clearly any antiquarian database must recognize date of publication as a search criterion. Bibliopoly allows search by specific date, by date-range and by cut-off date; you may, that is, look for books printed in 1670, for books printed between 1660 and 1680, or for books printed before or, for that matter, after 1670. But collectors may be interested in particular printers or in particular towns where publishing took place; a ‘nice book’ may mean one printed by Aldus, or in Bruges. Other collectors do not so much mind who printed the book or where, or even what it is about; they seek fine bindings, or illustrations, or paper of unusual type, or rare type-faces, or they are looking for library sets, or miniature books, characteristics which describe the book as artefact rather than detailing the utilities a non-antiquarian buyer first associates with books – the information or entertainment they provide. Or they may want books enhanced in interest by a previous ownership: the copy may have belonged to the book’s author, or have been inscribed by that author to a friend, or have belonged to someone else of particular interest. Bibliopoly allows the visitor to search for all the above characteristics: for publishers, for cities in which books were printed, for fine bindings, for books on paper of especially high quality, for association and presentation copies, for miniature books. The essential, distinguishing aspect of Bibliopoly is a category system designed for these searches. A few words on its two- and three-tier hierarchy will explain the approach we took. We have at present 323 categories in all, namely: 13 Main Categories, 236 Subcategories and 74 Sub-subcategories. Each main category (and subcategory in the case of Regions and Countries, the only group to have a third tier) is composed of its own subdivisions. Regions and Countries aims to give the geographical/topographical area to which a book is relevant. Many customers of bookshops are interested in their own place of birth or residence or in a region that attracts them for some other reason; here the definition required may be closer than merely the continent or large country in question, which is why three tiers were needed. Nothing in this world is without some cost. Antiquarian booksellers are an idiosyncratic bunch. They have their own key-word systems which may not coincide with ours but we have always done our best to accept as keywords those booksellers use in their uploads. As well as keywords, Bibliopoly uses alphanumeric codes in its category system. For the Country and Region category mostly, and for the Specialist Collecting category entirely only these codes can be used, and they may be used, at the dealer’s option, for all other categories. The codes are of particular benefit to the specialist dealer who deals in relatively few different types of book, for he can easily memorise the few codes he regularly uses. Again, where we have not accepted as keyword a phrase such as Musical Instruments –(both words making up the phrase have too many other references)– although we do have a subcategory which includes musical instruments, it is advisable to code a book with the correct alphanumeric code, in this case F3. Linguistic Bibliopoly works in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. On a superficial level, this means that the site has five home pages, five search forms, five texts for its other pages. You can go straight to the German version on http://www.Bibliopoly.ch and straight to the Italian version on http://www.Bibliopoly.it. The French and Spanish versions are respectively available on http://www.bibliopoly.com/frand http://www.bibliopoly.com/es. Or, on the site itself, you can easily move from one version to another. We were fairly disappointed by the automatic translation systems that came to our attention, so we arranged the necessary language work ourselves and are grateful to booksellers in various countries who helped us with correct phrases. A more taxing problem was to get the search machinery to obey an instruction of the following type: ” When someone asks for horses you must display all books which carry the code J3 together with those for which English-speaking dealers have included the keyword HORSE or the other English keywords we accept for this hippic and equestrian category and you must also show them the books for which foreign dealers have keyworded CHEVAUX, PFERDE, CAVALLI or CABALLOS etc.” This involves creating “dictionaries” of equivalences, not for every word, which is clearly impossible, but for the keywords accepted by the category system. Again, in answer to a request for books by Pushkin, the search engine must understand that material uploaded with POUCHKINE, or PUSCHKIN, or PUSCKIN in the author field must be displayed together with books with, as author, PUSHKIN; and, if the searcher wanted books printed in Bruges, then any catalogued with BRUJAS, or BRÜGGE in the imprint field should likewise be shown; if books printed by Aldus, then books by Aldo, Manuzio and Alde must appear. A further complexity is superadded by Latin. Most academic books up to 1750 or so were published in Latin (the international academic language of the time) as well, often, as in a vernacular. Scholars used both vernacular and Latin names; their books were printed in towns often given in Latin locative forms. While the use of an asterisk, which Bibliopoly allows, to search for a name or word where the user is unsure of the word’s ending or where the ending has various forms, may work in some cases, there are many where the Latin form differs widely from the vernacular. Lond* will get you Londinii as well as London, but if you wanted Paris, while par* would find you Parigi, Parisii, etc., it would not find you Lutetiae or Lutetie (Parisiorum), the standard Latin forms. Perhaps the worst linguistic challenge Bibliopoly faces is to avoid a proliferation of false positives where keywords in one language mean something completely different in another. In English the word ROMAN is an adjective denoting a thing or person(s) associated in some way with the capital of Italy. You might have the Roman Empire or Roman Catholicism or Roman baroque architecture. In French the word, as a noun, means the prose work called a NOVEL in English and, as an adjective, denotes the architectural or decorative style Romanesque. This problem meant that the category system needed editing lest ‘key-words’ were accepted which, although unambiguous in one language, would, unlike Horses, Chevaux, Pferde, Cavalli and Caballos, become ambiguous in a multilingual field. The Any Word search facility (see the other question above re search capability) is monoglot and rigidly pedantic in matters of spelling. If you ask for horses, you get horses but not a single Pferd or Cheval. On what do you base your listing fees? What fees do you now have? Dealers pay an invariable fixed fee of £30 per month plus a variable monthly fee based on the value of their online inventory. This second element is calculated as follows: first £100,000 free, thereafter from £100,000 to £1,000,000 at 1/120% per month, which, assuming no change in value, works out on an annual basis at 0.1 %. There is no additional fee for amounts in excess of £1,000,000. The minimum annual fee is therefore £360 and the maximum is £1260 (i.e. £360 plus 0.1% of £900,000). For the purposes of calculating fees, online inventories are valued in their listing currencies (any dealer may price his books in any major currency he wishes) on every day of the month; these daily amounts are then added together and divided by the number of days in the month to provide an average monthly value. This value, still in the dealer’s listing currency, is then converted into English pounds at the prevailing exchange rate. Fees may be paid either by credit card or by subtraction from an agreed prepayment. We thought the fairest way of charging something over a minimum listing fee was to get the bigger dealer to pay more. We assumed that margins in the antiquarian book trade work out at roughly the same irrespective of the unit price of books sold. Given an equal margin over an entire price range, total value seems more likely to determine the benefit an individual dealer should receive from a site than does any other figure except, that is, a percentage on sales made. But Bibliopoly has no e-commerce facility and simply does not know what sales are made. As we ourselves are rare-book dealers, we thought other dealers might not want us to have information on their transactions and customers. At the level in the trade where Bibliopoly operates, commercial success is less likely to mean making a series of one-off sales than meeting a single good customer; as each separate item means an additional chance of so doing there is a strong case for listing the maximum number of books. The fee scale represents an incentive to this end; while the first £100,000 is charged at 0.36% p.a. (or more where the value is less than £100,000), and the subsequent £900,000 at 0.1% p.a., amounts over that carry no charge at all. The more you list the cheaper, in relative but not absolute terms, it gets. Is your database searched by AddAll or Bookfinder? Yes, by both. Other than meta-search sites what are the ways you advertise to attract customers? We have advertised in trade and literary magazines in a total of six countries, and on Google. Some of our booksellers have kindly distributed fliers in their catalogues. Are there advantages to being a UK-based database? As Bibliopoly itself makes no sales or deliveries, we do not believe the location of its management makes any difference. Clearly transport costs, etc., give dealers a competitive edge in their own domestic markets. But the question has less relevance to an antiquarian book site than to a site listing multiple copies of the same second-hand or recently printed book where transport or customs delays and costs can have significant impact on the relative attraction of copies. It is fairly rare for Bibliopoly to list two copies of the same book. What background or experience do you have of the online book business? We had no experience of the online book business but were able to specify a database as an able young man then working in our English Literature department was knowledgeable in IT generally. We have benefited greatly from the services and consultancy of Ammonet in Zurich. Dr. Jack Benson of that firm has his own book website Bibliophile.net. Ammonet provides our multilingual technical support. Do you have professional bookseller management? We hope we answered this above. What geographical and demographic markets are you aiming at? International; upper end of the market. What problems or advantages do you see as unique to a UK book database? We see neither advantage nor disadvantage in the location of our office in London, of our technical consultants in Zurich, of our website and database on computers in the United States. Are there VAT problems for your UK dealers? No. Book sales in the United Kingdom are within the VAT legislation but the rate is zero. Unbound manuscript material is VATable at 17-½ %. However assessability to VAT of sales made by UK dealers varies with location of the buyer. Export permits are required for some books and manuscripts. As Bibliopoly itself makes no sales, it is not subject to any of these regulations. It must, however, levy VAT on invoices issued to UK dealers for listing fees payable to itself. If they are VAT-registered they recover this VAT. Do you use UK-based internet connection services? If so, how does your up-time compare to databases in the US? Our servers are located in Washington D.C., through which as much as 40 % of the world’s internet traffic passes. This gives us access to six DS-3s: UUNet, Sprint, AT&T, Global Crossing/Global Center, Level 3 and Teleglobe, and hence excellent connectivity. This combined with our dual server configuration means we suffer hardly any down-time. What services/features does your database have that you feel set you apart and/or will ensure its success? We hope our replies above answer this question. Please tell us anything you’d like to about yourself and/or your database, and thank you for participating. Thank you for asking us. We can’t think of much else except that we are happy with our name. As we wrote on the website, it is an English word, though not on everyone’s lips, and comes from Ancient Greece. It is meant to stress the continuity of a trade which has existed since technology, in the shape of money and dyes and the processing of animal skins, first allowed the written word to be bought and sold – a trade that will continue even if a future technology renders books obsolete. The antiquarian trade deals in the obsolete. If you want to read Aristotle you do not need an outdated recension of the text in a language you may not know, which is what Aldus Manutius provides. But customers and dealers who admire and covet the Aldine Aristotle prefer, for their purposes, the obsolete to the most recent and correct recension. This will remain true when an even better recension is available on some as yet undreamt-of medium. #databases

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

We’re starting a series with this issue of interviews with all the online commercial databases (although we have previously interviewed ABE, Alibris, and Antiqbook individuallywe’ll redo these after a bit to update them). In this issue, we have interviews from five of the newer databases (BookQuarters, Bibliology, Books & Collectibles, UsedBookCentral, and BiblioDirect)we’ve asked the same questions of each, so you’ll be able to compare answers from them and see where they differ on philosophy and technical issues. In our next Standard, we hope to have interviews from several more. We’ll try to update these yearly for you (if not sooner, if there are changes) so that you’ll have a ready reference. We have fascinating interviews in this issue with Lynn DeWeese-Parkinson, the Grand Poobah of the Bibliophile list and officer of a new commercial database, and from Sam Gottlieb–author, book fair owner, and bookseller. We also have a story of something we can all relate to as booksellers from our Australian colleague, Pete Mitchell, more details on the IOBA/ABE upcoming search function and IOBA’s advertising in Firsts Magazine from Len LanFranco, a more complete report on the IOBA seminar held by Vic Zoschak in California late last fall (from Vic and all the attendees), a great report on the L.A. Book Fair from Greg Williams, and a very informative Q&A section. And finally, we have short statements from each of IOBA’s newly elected officers and board members, and a report on election results from IOBA’s secretary. We still need more of you to volunteer to write articles or do interviewsplease contact me at any time at aaabooks@azalea.net Happy reading!! Shirley Bryant

Here’s our last 2001 issue of The Standard. We hope you will find it entertaining and informative, and that it will persuade more of you to volunteer to contribute in the future. I’m always open to ideas for new sections or types of articles or interviews. Or just more of the same type of thing we’re publishing now–come on, volunteer and make my day! We have our great and educational Q&A section by Jean McKenna, which I hope will be in each issue. Len Lanfranco gives us more details and info on the soon-to-be available IOBA/ABE search function and on IOBA advertising plans. What a boon for IOBA this search function will be! We have an interesting interview with Piet Wesselman of Antiqbook–very informative about the commercial database business and a peek into his life (talk about the entrepreneur spirit–Piet has us all beat), and a rather scary interview with Max Woosley, author of ‘Holy War’ which was published several months before WTC/Pentagon but in which he was uncomfortably close on predicting, via fiction, what could happen in the U.S. (not that Max himself is scary–just the timing on his book). And Maria Bustillos “tells all” about how she got into the bookselling business and how Popula was started and what its mission is–plus some info on an exciting upcoming Popula feature. Chris Volk has, via an email interview format, given us invaluable information about Black authors and their works, and some thought-provoking insights about the Black viewpoint and problems Blacks face as authors, opposed to some other ethnic or racial groups. Pat Ahearn gives us a wonderful inside glimpse of the oh-so-comprehensive and educational Bookseller Seminar held each year in Colorado Springs, with lots of candid photos (you may be in there!). And Oliver Corlett (Maria’s ‘significant other’) has given us permission to use his really outstanding article about the history of paperback books. You can’t help learning from this article! And finally, Connie Sabo-Risley has written us a very funny article on a typical hazard of the bookselling life that I think you’ll all be able to relate to. Thanks Connie, for being brave enough to be the first on this feature! I’d love to have a humorous article, cartoon, joke, etc., relating to books or bookselling for each issue–all of us can use some laughter now. So, send me any humorous thing you can think of (aaabooks@azalea.net)–we’re not limited to one each issue. The only criteria is that it has to make me giggle. :>) Till next issue! Shirley Bryant P.S. A reminder that election time is upon us again. The board will be calling for nominations soon and once that is completed, we’ll be voting for new officers and board members. Please get involved, and don’t forget to vote!

Seven months ago the current board and officers took office, filled with enthusiasm, energy, and big ideas. How have we done so far? If this were a college course, our grade would probably be incomplete. Things have not gone as smoothly or as quickly as we planned, but progress has been made and continues. Summers are historically the slow season in our business. Sales drop off, booksellers plan and take vacations, buying trips, etc. This summer the normal slowdown was exacerbated by a simultaneous slowdown in the general economy. IOBA’s board, like many of our members, were involved in many planned summer activities. Things slowed to a crawl around here also. Summer is over! (I know, the calendar says there are three weeks left, but I have five grown children and seven grandchildren. For almost thirty years I’ve marked the seasons by listening to school bells.) It is time to get on with business. Several lingering IOBA projects need resolution. The ABE powered search engine was to have been activated by now. Our board member handling this, Len Lanfranco, has had a few health problems that have slowed him down some this summer, and this has slowed our completion of the search engine project. I am hopeful that we will be able to move forward with this project within days. The web site overhaul has run way past its estimated completion date. This is my responsibility. Shortly after I undertook this I had personal and business emergencies arise that required dedicated attention. I have continued to work on the site project, but have not made as much progress as I had planned. While the other issues have not been completely resolved, I have been able to adjust my schedule and will be devoting significant time to complete this undertaking. While the new features have not been implemented, we have updated the members sections of the site, and your business data should be correct. We have also had several open or interim committee chairs on our board. I have requested board approval of nominees for two of these positions and plan to nominate one more new member within the next week. As soon as the board acts on my request we will make a public announcement of the new board members. There are still many items I would like to see accomplished before this year is over. I have proposed a set of revisions to our Bylaws Committee. If the committee acts on these they will be presented to the board for further action. I will post a separate note to the members list within the next few days with more details on these proposals and the reasoning behind them. You have seen the notices on the member’s list regarding the seminar being organized by Bob Erwin and hosted by Vic Zoschak. Our hope is to make this the first of a series of training seminars. We have also begun exploring making these seminars the basis for a series of on-line courses on bookselling. If you have the opportunity to attend this first seminar, please do so. It promises to be rewarding and fun. This note is running long, and I’m two days past the date I promised Shirley I would turn it in, so I’ll wrap up now. More than ever, I believe IOBA is needed in this market. Our members are not a homogenous group. We are different in age, experience, business plans, and goals. Often we voice our disagreements publicly. Still, if I order a book from you, or Pat Ahearn, or Julie Fauble, or Alyce Cresap, or Rae Benedetto, or Michael Slosberg, or any of the other members of IOBA, I have confidence that my order will be handled professionally, that the books will be just as they were described, and that if a mistake was made on the order, any one of these booksellers will efficiently and politely take the actions need to correct the problem. Let’s let the rest of the book buying public know about us. Until next time, I wish you only the best. Jim (Hart)

The Way I See It “Freedom is just another word for nothin’ left to lose…” -Janis Joplin All right, I admit it. As an independent bookseller in today’s marketplace, sometimes I wonder how much more I can lose. Being self-employed seems to mean paying my own way — and everyone else’s, too. We all have moments like this, when the downside of life looks bigger than the upside. But, Janis Joplin obviously never ran with my crowd. To the independent booksellers I know, “freedom” means taking responsibility for our own destiny. We have accepted responsibility for our own businesses, incomes, and futures. Add in our strong wills, creative thinking and professionalism and there’s the very essence of the modern entrepreneur. We ARE the cutting edge. Booksellers have always been a tough breed. The trade has been around a very long time and survived all challenges over the decades. Today, we are dealing with what could seem to be the single greatest threat to hardcopy books — the internet — and seeing instead it fueling one of the biggest booms in the number of new independent bookselling sources. The potentials in our own little bookselling community haven’t even scratched the surface as yet. Change can be rough, though. Adjusting to the rapid paced, high technology Internet environment has forced us to re-evaluate nearly every aspect of the way we have always done it before. From book valuation to deciding to be a brick and mortar and/or an online only bookseller, we each are deciding for ourselves what to keep from our past and what to revise. It’s interesting enough to wonder what a “typical” bookseller’s reality will be in another ten years, let alone one hundred years from now. As the president of IOBA, I spend some time thinking about that hypothetical bookseller and market, and have come to the conclusion that the most critical factor that will impact that future reality is the answer we develop to the following Big Question: “To what extent will independent booksellers prove able and willing to unify and cooperate for the common good of our trade, yet maintain the very independence which is our greatest strength as individuals?” This is a life or death question for IOBA, and any other independent organization or group forming up now or in the future. These efforts will live or die by how accurately they answer the Big Question, preserve each member’s vitality and uniqueness, and yet provide the best forum for us all to come together and not only agree on those concerns we share, but also work together to find our own solutions when we can. If we fail, we must accept responsibility for the growing plethora of other interests filling the void for their own cuts of the “pie” and grabbing up as much as they can, as if there isn’t plenty for everyone. Janis was wrong, but Pogo was right when he said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” I, for one, am not at all pessimistic about the present and future survival of this trade I love. I know IOBA has incredible potential to become a major asset to independent booksellers worldwide. I hear good words about other initiatives, like Book CoOp. I know if we fail to answer the Big Question correctly, find the winning balance between unity and individual independence, others will rise up. That’s natural in a competitive arena. These are great times to be alive and to be an independent online bookseller. I hear a lot of doom and gloom, and all the major chains and conglomerates are in my little town, too. Yet, a new little independent used bookstore just opened a mile from my house, and they obviously expect to succeed. I can’t help but love that winning attitude. It’s not true that freedom and independence means there’s nothing left to lose. The way I see it, being an independent today means we have everything to gain. I’m excited, and I’m a winner! How about you?

Reminders In Life About ten years ago, now, in December, I sat with my parents watching the CNN coverage of the Granada military action. This is significant only because at the time I was a ten year veteran in the military, working Special Operations, and those units were my own, those guys in BDUs running around, the gunship crews, they were all friends of mine and I was sitting home recovering from successful surgery to remove an ovarian tumor instead of working on the mission. It’s the only action I missed, and the funny thing was, it didn’t bother me to not be on the inside knowing what was actually going on. For me, the prospect of cancer had been a wake up call, one of those reminders in life, which made me think about what I wanted to use my time and mind and energy for. Travelling to foreign places and blowing things up, for whatever reason, wasn’t what I wished to be remembered for. I recovered, returned to work, finished my hitch and left the military to become a deputy sheriff here in Okaloosa County, Florida instead. It seemed a worthier form of warfare to me, and at least this way, if I died, it would be on my own ground and for a cause I personally believe in rather than one I got told to believe in. It was the right decision for me. However, my old nemesis came back to hassle with me again and about three years ago I had two more operations, both successful, to beat tumors, this time trying the breast cancer route. This second “go round” was harder than the first, really knocked me down and took a long time to recover from. In ways, I am still trying to recover the energy I once had. Just another reminder, and I started Books By Blondie, an online business, to have something to fall back on should another round be ahead of me and I not prove able to continue as a cop. Shortly after this, I got recruited into IOBA by Rik Pavlesak, one of the best friends anyone can have and the owner of Blue Monkey Books. I poured a lot into it, because I believed it could be important for me and others as a small, independent bookseller. I wanted it to be here and be strong in case I ever needed it. IOBA was just an idea then. I had the pleasure and heartburn both of being one of the Founders and working with the others as we struggled to define and give birth to this dream. Life is strange at times. I started by working as the webmaster for the website, then was drawn in to be the interim Vice President and later was voted in as the first acting President of IOBA. It’s been a very long couple years, full of challenges and hard work to learn the job and juggle this responsibility along with being a cop and a bookstore owner and, occasionally, having a life, too. I’d never done anything like starting and then running a corporation with a board. I was still learning the book business as well. Did mistakes get made? Yep. Did I lose some battles? Yep. I also was in on some great calls and big wins. Life is like that. One battle won or lost doesn’t make the whole war, and it is good to keep your eye on the long term perspective as much as you can to weather occasional setbacks and losses. Next week, I have another date with the surgeons for another battle with the old nemesis. It will be old news by the time this goes to press. I’m not worried about it, I feel really positive and haven’t chosen to share some of my personal world with you out of some maudlin sense of self pity or doom and gloom. I’m smiling a lot as I type this up. It’s just another one of those reminders in life to run a self check on where I am, where I’m going, what I stand for and what I’d be remembered for if I lost the war today. I like the answers better than I did ten years ago, but I still have a long way to go. I haven’t gotten it right, yet, but I’m learning. A couple weeks ago, I sent a call for volunteers to the membership for help in the coming elections. Last time around, people lacked confidence, perhaps, and the interim board had to handle it and ended up fortunate to get one candidate for each office. Later, we took some criticism for that, there were some mutters about it. I’d like to avoid that, this time, however NO ONE, not ONE, volunteered or even enquired what we had in mind or needed. There’s a lot of reasons for this. The biggest one is, you don’t realize how much IOBA needs YOUR help. It really does. Secondly, some of you don’t know that most of your current board had no prior experience, learned as we went along, and are still learning and making mistakes along with the good moves, and this is OK. Our members have never demanded perfection, just candor, from me. I believe the entire current board would say the same. All you need is the desire to make a difference, to learn and grow some more, to have an effect, to work with your peers, argue and agree and all the usual work of a relationship, be it working or personal. Having a tough skin also helps. Thirdly, secretly, maybe you lack self confidence to speak up, feeling you are too new, or not good enough in some talent or area or way. Facing the unknown is scary. I was scared to accept the nomination for president last year, if you want to know the truth. My reasons included all of the above ones. I’m not a fighter by nature, but I’ve learned it’s not being afraid which makes a person a coward. It is what you do despite being afraid which determines whether you face your battles with courage. Win some, lose some, what really matters in life is how you play the game. IOBA needs volunteers to oversee and help with the election process. IOBA needs several candidates for office to step forward to be the ones to take our association from here. Consider this a personal reminder in life and decide what you’d like to be remembered for a year from now. I really hope and pray with all my heart it will be that, among other things, you choose to add to your short list being much more active in our association, however your volunteerism takes form. No one gets paid here, we’re all volunteers. No more volunteers, no more IOBA. That would be a damn shame.