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As usual, I bought a few books to prepare myself for the journey. The first one was a rather dry, brief traveler’s history of Peru. If I had read this before I planned the trip, I might have changed the destination since it made the country seem rather boring. I then skimmed through two guide books: Footprints, a rather snobbish British one, and the ubiquitous Lonely Planet. If I had bought them before I planned the trip, I might have been scared off, since both were replete

When making a large haul, all kinds of things turn up in the net. Even if it’s only books, rather than loads of paper, inscriptions and the things that fall out of books often give you some picture of the previous owner. While whipping through a load of estate books recently, I nearly threw a newer-looking one in the discard/recycle pile, rather than the price, check, keep for myself, or donate piles. That’s because it was written in. The title was List Your Self: Listmaking

I recently did something I never thought I would do: I tore a book to shreds. When my children were little, they routinely received harsh punishments for this sort of behavior. What brought me to commit such an act of destruction? It was not a fit of rage or any form of mental breakdown. It was an assignment for a class in book repair. Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to study book making and repair. Along with my fellow attendees, I shuddered at the thought of

This is the third in a series of articles taking a brief look at the pros and cons of the various multi-dealer book-listing databases. The first and second in the series looked at AbeBooks.com and Alibris.com and can be found in the two previous issues of the IOBA Standard. This article takes a look at Amazon.com, the largest and in many ways the most important internet bookselling site. Amazon’s commitment to “branding” and to creating a significant presence on the net resul

One chapter ends and another begins… While I am sure there are quite a few professors who left academe to open bookstores, I am not sure how many have spent their careers shouting, “5, 6, 7, 8…!!” For, you see, I have spent much of my life since age 22 teaching and choreographing jazz dance. It is not something that I aspired to as a child growing up in Long Island, New York. Rather, it was something that happened to me along the way to a career in music or theatre, both of w

I’m Bob Schilling, a 46 year old bibliophile living in Gresham, Oregon; a native of the Northwest, born and raised in Seattle, WA; and a resident of Oregon since 1999. My wife of 22 years, Arlyee (pronounced like “Charlie” without the “Ch”) and I started Schillingslist Select Used Books in the fall of 2004. It’s a supplemental income for us, one that is ever growing, but more importantly, it’s a supplemental passion. Like many of you, I love to traffic in books, love to brows

I am Victor Goldring and trade under the simple name of Goldring Books. Based in Eastbourne, East Sussex, United Kingdom. It is operated out of our home and we sell on the internet only, with our website www.goldringbooks.com being established in 2004. I came to bookselling late in life having held a senior accounting position with an American multi-national oil corporation but decided to take early retirement at 50, too much stress and travelling having worn me down. It was

Ye Olde Booksellers Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms by Guido Bruno (Detroit: The Douglas Book Shop, 1922) is further excerpted, though now from a new personal copy hand numbered 925 of 1,000 printed. The Romance of a Chicago Book Dealer Wells Street, between the river and East Chicago Avenue, is the Bowery of Chicago. Once a residential section, now the old mansions and frame cottages, hastily erected after the fire, are dilapidated and are