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Q. I’ve been looking for ways to supplement the low sales recently. Is there any market for book searches and if so, what kind of fees do you charge? What are the mechanics – i.e. collect fee up front or upon producing results, time spans allowed, et al.? Is it worth it? Any feedback will be appreciated. – Cynthia Putt, Parnassus On Wheels A. There is still a market for search services, though obviously much smaller than it once was. I don’t pursue them but still get a fair n

“Customers will buy our books to read them” was just one of our naive assumptions when we began selling books. We also believed that we could make a lot of money selling books and that there really was a Santa Claus. We can’t say how many customers who buy online from Dog Lovers Bookshop never read the books we sell them. What we do know is that, when we had a bricks-and-mortar store in midtown Manhattan, some of our customers told us that they bought books primarily for deco

Table of Contents I’ll Get Straight To The Point Biblio Finds Its Way in the Used, Rare, and Out-of-print Book Market Is a “Stand-Alone” Signature Better? Selling Books Is Like Fly-fishing Discarded Books: The Facelift for Ex-Library Books Slipcases and Clamshell Boxes A Little History of The History of Woman Suffrage Are Used Book Sales Hurting New Book Sales ? The Bookstores of Madison Wisconsin 28th Annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair, Ephemeral Assays – Jane

Many in the book and paper trade have had occasion to ponder early family history items that come our way. Family Bibles, journals, letters, and images are fairly common at auctions and estate sales. We have all wondered if this material is worth anything in general, and some of us would even like to find interested descendants in particular. When profit and genealogy intersect, that’s even better. I’ve been working with amateur and professional genealogists for many years no

MP: Tom, what’s different about BookWriter Professional? Why would a bookseller be interested in this program? TS: A number of reasons, but if I had to choose one aspect it would be the program’s prime directive of “empowering” a bookseller. Having the tools needed to get the job done and making them easily accessible and intuitive to operate makes it much easier for a bookseller to be productive. It also helps them to make good business decisions. They might even have a litt

Most book dealers have a story about how they found themselves in the book trade and I am no exception.\ I don’t think there are many small kids who aspire to grow up to be used book dealers, but I may be as close as they come. From my earliest memories of childhood, I have been fascinated by commerce. I loved everything that had to do with just about any aspect of commerce. I can remember when I was 6, teaching my 2 year old brother how to count using play money as my media

Like most people in the used and rare book business today, I was not trained for this career. I did not have access to the generations of knowledge and experience enjoyed by the children and grandchildren of the founders of Dawson’s Book Shop in Los Angeles, the Arthur H. Clark Company now in Spokane, Washington, and The Argosy Book Shop in New York City. I had to learn this business by listening to mentors, watching how other booksellers worked, and by making mistakes more e

You read that right, folks. I’ve been too busy to think up some witty nonsense for a title, so I’m putting the burden on you. Go ahead and think up a good one. Got it? Just imagine it up at the top of the screen right now. Please note that those of you who thought of “Editor Too Lazy to Think of a Title” will have to try again: I’m not using that one. What have I been busy editing? A comprehensive list and detailed comparison of book listing sites, an extensive article on gen