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Q: Piet, how and when did you originally get into the book business? As a high school dropout I wanted to become either a bookseller or a journalist. Bookseller was easiest. I worked in a (new books) bookshop and with a publisher from age 17 to 23. But during these years I got interested in academic matters while reading a lot of the books I handled, so I got serious and after my army service moved to Amsterdam, finished school in evening classes and went to the University to

Q: What originally gave you the idea of starting an online auction? A: For years, in connection with my work as a housewares designer, I had been haphazardly collecting mid-century fashion and design magazines. In late 1997 I answered a classified ad from a guy in Hollywood who said he had some magazines, and somehow we wound up buying this whole warehouse full of books, originally with a view to opening a prop house. One thing led to another … we learned about the developme

Q: Do you feel like a prophet, after the WTC and Pentagon attacks? I imagine it was hard to take, seeing it actually happen when you’d been so deeply involved in the research. Where were you when it happened? A: I was at work and received word that an airplane had struck one of the WTC buildings. Since I work in a vault without TV, I thought it must be some hapless single-engine piper or something. When I received word that a second aircraft hit, I knew it was terror. People

Along with many other products of our culture, paperbacks have become a very active area for collecting. This article gives a short history of this quite interesting artifact, and a very brief overview of what collectors in the category generally look for. The web is chockful of informative articles and sites on the subject, mostly by enthusiastic amateurs (in the best sense of that word), and we have included links to some of these spread throughout this piece. Nineteenth Ce

As with many of us, I was a book reader first, then a book collector. Then I decided to enter the wonderful world of on-line bookselling, which seemed ideal for me: I could learn the trade in my spare hours after my full-time job, and selling via the Internet eliminated the overhead and the huge time commitment of operating a brick and mortar store. And becoming a bookseller was wonderful in every way, but one. No one had ever warned me that I would risk becoming Persona Non

Q: One of your specialties is Black literature. How/why did you choose this area to specialize in? A: I had both personal reasons and what I like to think are practical business reasons. The civil rights movement was very active when I was a college student, and in the years right after that, and while I was only involved in very minor ways (participating in a tutoring program, etc.) it was something I believed in, and I began to read and buy books related to blacks in Americ

The program will launch shortly after the first of the year. Customers will be able to access the search from IOBA’s homepage or from a member’s home page. The search function is being provided by the Advance Book Exchange (ABE) and will search IOBA members inventory on ABE. The search function will be identified as IOBA’s, not ABE’s. The only ABE identification will be an option at the end of the search to go to ABE if the customer wants more listings. “This is one of the mo

Table of Contents Report from the President IOBA Q & A Column Dorothy Jane Mills, Author of “Ann Likes Red” Professionalism Len Kessler, the author of “Mr. Pine’s Purple House”, The Psychology of Acquisition: Turnover and the Maximization of Profits Jill Morgan, Publisher of Purple House Press What’s This Book Worth? John Dunning, author of “Booked to Die” Note from the Editor