ALL ARTICLES

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “serendipity” as: “the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.” The word has just celebrated its 262nd birthday, having been coined by Horace Walpole in a letter to Horace Mann, dated 28 January 1754. Walpole built his neologism on the name of a land in a Persian fairy tale from Amir Khusrau’s Hasht-Bihisht of 1302. For an interesting discussion of this, see Dr. Oliver Tearle’s “A Short Histor

Once I got the hang of blogging, I started The Book Trout, where I spent much more time carefully crafting longish essays, book reviews, and reports about the world of used and rare books. I wanted to have our bookstore blog be a polished virtual front door for our bookstore and attract booklovers to our website and open shop. Where I spent minutes dashing off a Crispy Cook entry, my Book Trout posts took hours. Guess which blog is more popular? The Crispy Cook gets many mor

Bibliofile will be an occasional column at The Standard, which will present bits and pieces from around the world related to the love of books. Today’s offerings all come from Atlas Obscura, a website that features articles about sometimes little-known – but always very cool – people, places and things. “If you’re searching for miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built ent

The following article was originally published in the Summer 2008 issue of The Standard. One of the best things about being in the used book business is that you never know what to expect. When you get up in the morning, you can never predict what the day will bring. Usually, the first thing I do when I get out of bed is check my e-mail for orders that came in overnight. Earlier this year I noticed a pattern that most of the orders were coming in at the beginning of the week.

Table of Contents From the (Guest) Editor Books Are Still Alive and Well From On-Line to Selling at Antiquarian Book Fairs Book Selling at Antique Malls Book Selling at Genre Conventions 2013 IOBA Scholarship Announcement Bungalow Books – Pueblo, Colorado Squid Ink Books – Tucson, Arizona Warwick Books, South Pasadena, California

The theme of this issue of The Standard is perhaps somewhat counter-intuitive for the journal of the Independent Online Booksellers Association: real world bookselling opportunities for the online dealer. IOBA President Chris Volk sets the stage as she explains how the reports of the death of the book have been greatly exaggerated. Next is a pair of articles that explore real world bookselling at book fairs and at antique malls, with contributions from several of your IOBA co

In recent years, the online bookseller forums have been buzzing with the message that books are dead (or dying at least), that e-books will make printed books obsolete, and that no one is reading anyhow! Before giving in to the doomsayers, try a change in perspective – look up from your computer screen and check out some events in the real world. This spring we attended two book festivals – the long running Los Angeles Times Book Festival on the University of Southern Califor

with Lee Kirk, Gayle Williamson, and Sharon Eisenberg So as part of this month’s theme of alternate selling venues for online book sellers, I thought it would be interesting to do a piece on selling in antique malls. Over the years I’ve heard many anecdotal accounts of dealers who set up spaces in antique malls, with mixed positive and negative results. I’ve been selling at the Westminster Antique Mall for over a year, taking over my current space as of January 2013. Selling