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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

Blurbettes: Faux Real: Genuine Leather and 200 Years of Inspired Fakes by Robert Kanigel (Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2007) comes with two holes in the dust jacket. More on that later. From the front inside flap. “What makes genuine leather genuine? What make real things…real? In an age of virtual reality, veneers, synthetics, plastics, fakes, and knockoffs, it’s hard to know. “Over the centuries, men and women have devoted enormous energy to making fake things see

from The Delaware & Raritan Canal: A Pictorial History by William J. McKelvey, Jr The Delaware & Raritan Canal: A Pictorial History by William J. McKelvey, Jr. (York, PA: Canal Press Incorporated, 1975). Nine copies on one of the search services. Four of these include the following notes. “With a substitute photo for one on page 27 if you find existing imagine offensive.” “Includes photo to add if another photo of naked men and boys along the canal is found to be offensive.”