LISNews: Librarian News

Interesting musings of a Fayetteville, AR blogger Jonah Tebbets, The Iconoclast, on the subject of the public library selling books through the internet. He also touches on independent new & used bookstores selling books, buying books on-line on your own, collecting taxes at brick & mortar stores and not collecting taxes on the internet...and so on.

What think you all? Do you care where you get your books or book-related stuff? Is your primary goal to get the best price? Or something else? Or is it all (or some) a huge waste of big old trees?????? Log in, identify yourself and post your comments below.

Barnes & Noble has changed its mind about selling the OJ book. The Washington Post reports that for days Simpson's book has been in the top 100 on Barnes & Noble.com and at one point even topped the best-seller list. "If I Did It" has also entered the top 100 on Amazon.com.

Simpson has maintained his innocence in the 1994 killings in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. Acquitted of the murders in 1995 and currently living near Miami, he has disowned the book, saying he had little do with its creation. The ghostwriter, Pablo Fenjves, has disagreed, saying "If I Did It" is based on extensive discussions with Simpson.

Article on the independent Brattle Bookshop in Boston, first opened in 1949 by George Gloss and still run by his son Ken.

Ken says, ""Some day, the Brattle Book Shop will be history -- neither of Gloss's daughters is interested in running it -- but no time soon." Like a most true booksellers Gloss says he will retire the day after he dies.

Ken Gloss also says that "within the next five to seven years, 75 percent of used bookstores will be gone..."it's the real estate and the Internet. What you pay me for is to gather the books together. The Internet does that incredibly efficiently."

Columnist Michael Lieberman adds, " The Internet cannot replace the intangibles. It can offer the books but it can't offer the vibe."

Worried about their industry's carbon footprint, publishers in Britain are considering tossing the sale-or-return system by which they have traditionally supplied bookstores with books and going to a practice of firm sale, at least with older titles.

"Can we really justify sending books all over the country, only to send them back on the same journey to be destroyed?" Victoria Barnsley, CEO of HarperCollins UK, recently asked in the trade journal The Bookseller.

Her counterpart at Hachette UK, Tim Hely Hutchinson, agrees. "It's pretty silly to send backlist shuttling back and forth - it's a waste of time, money and resources."