Grub Street Printing Newsletter #53, September, 2013

I'm sorry that I come off as a Luddite curmudgeon. I'm just a curmudgeon.
My Luddite defense is that my house has four working networked PCs, two smart phones, two digital cameras, a Netbook and a tablet. I'm not resisting life in the digital age.
But back when I had a regular old cell phone I remember reading about all the wonderful things you could do with a smart phone: read books and magazines, map your way to your destination, even watch television and movies.
Are you nuts? What kind of a masochist would put himself through all that? Reading a

 book on a 4 inch screen is not something a person with options would do. I downloaded Alice in Wonderland to my smart phone and thought I would try reading it again as I waited for my number to be called at the local Secretary of State office. Really? Some of you folks do that?
Watching Netflix on a smart phone reminded me of that ad with Shaquille O'Neal sitting in a Buick with the driver's seat leaned so far back it was almost flat. In the next camera shot he's towering over the front fender. I'd pay to see the video of him getting in to and out of that car. You can fit big things into small things but that doesn't mean that it's a great idea.
And I understand the Apple television ad with everyone in the big city desperately trying to drown out the world around them by having white earbuds surgically implanted in their head. I can understand wanting to block out the sounds of the city.
But I also like to eavesdrop on the subway, hear the hubbub of the restaurants, and listen to all the families and lovers stroll through Central Park. I mean, I have a large music collection, but dear lord, I don't need to listen to it 24/7.
I do have a few thousand .mp3s (compressed files) stored on various devices around the house. I know the quality of sound is determined by the quality of the recording and the ability of the output device to accurately deliver the sound. Earbuds are nice, very convenient, perfect for .mp3s. I have portable radios with CD players in my garage and basement. Mp3s sound as good on those implements as they're capable of sounding. But I also have my old component stereo system. Many, many years ago I assembled the best components I could afford, and I still like listening to vinyl records.
And I do love the convenience of always having a camera in hand as long as I have my smartphone with me. But I've probably shot over 1,000 rolls of 35mm over the past forty five years. I still have my old 35mm SLRs, a good collection of lenses and a few rolls of Fuji film around. I know that my smartphone camera has a bazillion mega pixels and 64 million colors. But film has infinite megapixels and color that falls outside the RGB and CMYK spectrums.
Add to that the lens on my phone camera is molded plastic and the images are saved as .jpg files (compressed images) and the attendant pictures are to film pictures as .mp3s are to vinyl.
And that means that they're just good enough.
And for many instances they are good enough. They're just not as good as possible. Carrying a book on your Kindle is not the same thing as carrying a book, at least to me. It's good enough. I often read the newspaper on our tablet, and that's good enough, but we still subscribe to three newspapers.
I have listened to Thelonious Monk's Blue Monk through earbuds while walking down the street and I've played it on my home stereo. The .mp3 was my only option while walking and that was good enough, but quality wise...
Smartphones, .mp3 players, digital cameras, and ereaders expand our ability to bring what we love along with us, to easily carry ten books on vacation, to quickly snap a picture in your yard of a deer grazing forty feet away from you, to dull the hum of the jet engines as you fly across country.
They're all handy and they each have their place. They're less expensive and generally more portable. But they don't represent the apex of anything except the technology that created them.
And I suppose that's just going to have to be good enough.
 

Google and Copyrights

In a bid to narrow the definition of piracy, Google claims that book scanning falls under the definition of fair use and so doesn't violate copyrights. Why didn't the guy who started Napster think of this?

What Kids Read

An interesting survey about what our children are reading has just been released. This graphic from the report shows the differences in required school reading over the past century.

Borders Renaissance (in Asia)

The question, “What's in a name?” has been answered by Popular Holdings purchase of all names and intellectual property of the bankrupt Borders Singapore for $100,000. Once the leading bookseller in Singapore, new Borders' stores hope to be open by 2014. Unfortunately, Amazon just announced free shipping to Singapore.

Paper & Ink College Textbooks Sales Collapse

Both of my children have graduated from college in the past 10 years so I learned first hand how bizarre textbook pricing has become and understand why students are hijacking the system. To my mind, it's the only group of publishers that deserve the pain they're experiencing.

Resurgent Indies

It seems every month there are news stories describing a resurgent independent bookstore marketplace. This story interviews some store owners who discovered that it takes more than espresso machines and sofas to build a profitable niche in the 21^st century.

...and Burying Indies

Acolyte of the ebook industry Seth Godin has declared that the death of independent bookstores at the hands of Amazon should make book lovers weep for joy.

Saving Bookstores in Quebec

While appreciating the experience of shopping in an independent bookstore is something many of us enjoy, I'm not sure Quebec's plan to raise book prices to save their indies is a very good idea...unless Amazon is also banned from their province.

Saving the Stacks on Manhattan

Plans to modernize and consolidate Manhattan's public libraries are on hold after prominent scholars objected to removing the stacks to an off-site storage facility. A short history of the library and the stacks can be found here.

A Downside to Printing Money

No matter what one prints or the process used, stuff happens, like the 30 million $100 bills rejected by the New York Fed for a “lack of crispness”. Disposal and reprinting costs are said to be around $3.75 million.

More Government Printing Woes

A phone number on the back of Oklahoma's lottery tickets carried a telephone number that now belongs to a sex fantasy hotline . Officials said they retired the telephone number some years ago but had preprinted it on rolls of paper that went unused and were thought to have been destroyed.

1,000 Best Public Domain Novels

The top 1,000 novels have been identified based on a formula using metadata, Project Gutenberg downloads and available Goodreads rankings.The top 100 from the list are shown here, sorted so that only an author's highest ranked book is included.

Memorable Bookstores

I remember bookstores that I've visited in cities across the country and hope you get the chance to visit some of these community bookstores as you travel.

Punctuation and All That

There seems to be more spelling and grammar errors in our area's local papers now that bloggers are in and reporters are out. Here are the magazines with the fewest gaffes, including Playboy and GQ.

Banned Books

Each September, Banned Book Week is observed at the end of the month. Best selling author Judy Bloom helped one book stay on the library shelves.

Final Thought

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.” Carlos Ruiz Zafón 

Grub Street Printing Newsletter # 52, August 2013

In the business world observers and pundits frequently struggle to make sense of corporate mergers. Acquisitions are generally fairly easy to understand; one company has technology, clients, facilities or profits that a larger company acquires rather than tries to emulate.
But in the Detroit area we learned years ago that there is no such thing as a merger of equals, famously declared by Mercedes Benz when it “merged” with Chrysler. It can all get so confusing that sometimes even the negotiators aren't sure what's happening, such as when the Stroh's Beer company thought they were buying or maybe merging with Milwaukee's Schlitz Beer only to find out that Schlitz was the “more equal” of the two after the deal was done.
Last year when Ann Arbor's two largest book manufacturers merged, a lot of industry observers were scratching their heads trying to figure out how the merger made sense and who was the “more equal”.
Today in the book industry, growth is the goal but stability is the key fallback position. The combined sales of Edwards Brothers and Malloy Litho isn't in a growth cycle. Edwards Brothers Malloy reported 2012 sales of $115 million compared to a pre-merger sales total of $125 million in 2008.
One of the unique features about the merger was each company had invested heavily in Timson Book Presses, to the point that the merged company had more of them than any one other company anywhere in the world.
And while these presses don't come cheap, they are fire breathing monsters devouring a ton of paper in minutes and spitting out baled signatures ready for binding. It was said they could be profitable printing as few as 300 copies, but that was before 300 copies could be produced cheaply using digital equipment. Realistically, the longer the run the better, because once these presses are wide open the crew is busy keeping a roll of paper in front of it and the signatures flowing to the bindery at the delivery end.
But those great long runs get scarcer every year. Edwards Brothers once produced Harry Potter books as one of many manufacturers who each got an order for Harry's production. Today, Edwards Brothers Malloy easily have the capacity to do all of the printing for each volume by itself. Trouble is, no one is asking them to.

So the announcement on July 31 that the newly merged company had decided that the Edwards Brothers company headquarters on State Street in Ann Arbor would be sold and the business consolidated into Malloy Litho's headquarters on Jackson Road shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it did.
As John Edwards, CEO of the merged companies says,, “But like most book printers, we’ve seen a decline in longer run offset business. At the same time, our digital operation is growing at a 20 percent clip .”
I think the two take-aways from this are: number one, all that press power has produced over-capacity in long runs for the new company and number two, digital printing is less expensive with commensurately lower margins.
The impact of this consolidation is far reaching with many unanswered questions lingering for further explanation. What's known is that the State Street facility has somewhere around 350 – 400 employees in a 185,000 square foot building situated on 16 acres.
Malloy's Jackson Road plant hosts around 250 employees in a similar 180,000 square foot facility, but here's the surprising difference. Over the years Malloy Litho has expanded, expanded, and expanded it's factory. An old picture in their lobby shows an aerial view taken years ago of the plant after just an addition or two had been added. Now, nearly any Malloy employee could point to the vacant land in the picture and describe which part of the modern plant it became. And that's the problem; they've used up all of that land. If another expansion was in the works they'd have to either plow-up the parking lot, figure out how to add a second and third story to most of the buildings or purchase some very expensive land adjoining their current plot.
So I don't think that an expansion of the physical plant is in the long term outlook.
The usual thing to say is that the company will try to retain as many employees as possible, but that's not really keeping with the spirit of downsizing is it? Edwards Brothers opened a smaller book manufacturing plant in North Carolina some years ago and had a semi-truck shuttling work back and forth from Ann Arbor every day. Perhaps some skill employees can relocate to the Lillington plant.
But even if Ann Arbor remains the short-run book manufacturing capitol of the world, there's no way the remaining four companies can absorb 300+ employees in the near future. There may be 300+ openings for people with book manufacturing experience in the entire country at the moment, but I doubt it.
Edwards Brothers began in Ann Arbor 120 years ago, mimeographing copies of law lectures for use at the University of Michigan School of Law. Malloy Litho was established on Jackson Road in 1960 by Jim Malloy.

 

Obama Likes Amazon?

President Obama visited an Amazon warehouse calling it a fine example of an American success story. Are there any other companies that worked as zealously to avoid paying taxes? Attorney General Eric Holder even filed suit against Amazon's perceived competitors. I don't get it.

Amazon Not Predatory?

While Apple appeals the judgement that found it guilty of manipulating ebook pricing, the notion that Apple and its allies were simply fending off the monopolistic game plan of Amazon is debunked.

Finns Want Looser Copyright Laws

Suggestions to loosen some copyright laws (downloading an MP3 illegally would become a misdemeanor) were collected and edited via crowdsourcing and presented to the Finnish Parliament. The purported reason for crowdsourcing the proposal was to counterbalance the the power of lobbyists.

Karl Pohrt

The Shaman Drum bookstore was miniscule when compared to the two big chains that came to control book retailing a decade ago, but its impact far exceeded its size. Owner Karl Pohrt, who passed away July 10, was first a reader, but championed independent bookstores, downtown Ann Arbor's commercial revival, publishing, and the Great Lakes Literary Arts Center which he founded.

Books As Art

Books are appearing as a popular new medium for artistic creation. The works are ingenious (although the use of the word “fetishists” is a reach), practical and worthy of museum display.

Why You Need A Pseudonym

(and How to Create One)

Now that we know J.K.Rowling has published a novel of some import using a pseudonym, it's time to not only discuss the reasons for writing under a pseudonym, but also the ins and outs of choosing one.

South Korea's Grub Street?

An entire city devoted to book and magazine publishing and printing? Sounds a bit like 18^th century Grub Street. And I thought Ann Arbor was Book City!

Avoiding Digital Headaches

Are you tired of “spam” in your Inbox? Do you forget your passwords, or worse, fear that someone else could use them? Do you hate that even your own computer tracks your every move, let alone what the NSA may follow? Fear not. The Russian secret service's (FGA) solution is to abandon computers for typewriters after watching the havoc Edward Snowden has caused in US security circles. Next, a boom in shredders?

Books to Make You Smart?

Djanice asked for followers on Reddit to share the title of a book that “made them smarter”. The format is not a simple, straight forward list but suggestions with comments following. Links to read free samples of many of the titles are here.

                                        Why is a “Blurb” a “Blurb”?

For some reason I assumed the word “blurb” was an acronym, but for what? It actually began with a fictitious woman named Belinda Blurb in 1907.

Not Dead Yet Awards

Last year print-centric blog DeadTreeEdition asked its readers to name four print related companies most likely to go out of business in 2012. While some have written obits on file, all four continue to exist.

Twenty Years of Chicken Soup

Chicken Soup for the Soul debuted twenty years ago and has gone on to sell over 112 million copies in North America, not to mention being translated into forty languages, and spinning off an additional 250 titles. It also produces or licenses CDs, DVDs, pet food, greeting cards, and flowers. What a brand!

Fonts for Scientists (Not Scientific Fonts)

If scientists had tried to “brand” themselves over the centuries, what would their brand logo look like? Look here.

Final Thought

We have no Academy, thank Heaven, to tell what is real English and what isn’t. Our Grand Jury is that ubiquitous person, Usage, and we keep him pretty busy at his job. Gelett Burgess

*************************************** ***** Past GrubStreetPrinting.com newsletters can be found at http://grubstreetnews.blogspot.com/

Grub Street Printing Newsletter #51, July 2013

I owe some of you an apology. It's this whole LinkedIn thing. I guess I just don't get it.

After closing Baker Johnson, Inc. in 2005, every article I read about finding work insisted the key to re-employment was the internet. Trade groups had work available sites (PrintWorkers.com – less than one posting per month), and newspaper ads were said to be useless because of Monster.com where most all jobs were listed in the 21^st century (I tried Monster but I was too old for all the positions listed for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, which made up about a third of all the ads). Most importantly, one must use the worldwide web to network, network, network.

At the time I read that LinkedIn was the best place to network to let people know your talents were available, so the more people you linked to, the faster you'd be hired. I went to town and invited lots of friends from the print industry to “link” to me and accepted a lot of invitations from friends in the publishing industry and...nothing happened.

But I was comfortable being on LinkedIn in a very passive sort of way. I'd get occasional emails inviting me to link with someone and while I felt no urgency to do so, I wondered if anger or disappointment would result from my inaction. Then reality kicked in and I thought, “Get real!”

And there were emails letting me know whenever someone I was linked to had linked to someone else. It began to occur to me that the exponential growth of the whole thing was getting out of hand so that at some point I would have maybe just four or five degrees of separation to anyone in the whole damn world!

Then late last year I started getting the darndest emails. A friend in Hawaii had “endorsed” me, then a friend in Illinois posted a “new skill” (except it wasn't new at all, she'd always had it since I'd known her). What was this? An endorsement? I tried it and endorsed someone but the idea that my endorsement, by checking a little check-box, would make or break anyone's status page was absurd. I tried to recommend someone, but met none of the four requirements needed to recommend someone...as if my recommendation actually mattered either.

So now I've slowed down on accepting LinkedIn invitations. It's a bit out of my league. For those I'm linked to, you already know that I never post anything new anyway.

And while web sites and my email newsletter subscriptions tell me the key to all riches lies in social media, I freely admit that Grub Street Printing doesn't

Face on Facebook

Space on MySpace

Redd on Reddit

Tweet on Twitter

Digg on Diggit

Share on InShare

Stumble on StumbleUpon

Tumbl on Tumblr

Pin on Pinterest

Chime on Chime.In

Eat on Delicious

Inst on Instagram

or attempt any other form of social networking on Grub Street's computer except speaking with you on my Skype phone. Having a chance to talk with you is about all the digital networking I can handle, and I do enjoy it.

 

Penguin Moves to Dismiss Lawsuit

Having purchased publishing services company Author Solutions (a den of scamsters?) last year, Penguin has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit for breach of contract (among other things) and remove Penguin itself from the suit altogether. Penguin and Random House plan to finalize their merger this month.

Fonts for Dyslexics

I know some of you think I go on a bit about fonts, but you can see in this article how a font can influence the ability of the reader to scan across words with clarity and comprehension.

Is Barnes & Noble Terminal?

Many industry watchers believe B&N may be struggling through its death throes. B&N is losing sales, has had to stop offering some Nook models and saw its stock tank 17% in one day last week. B&N executives deny their stores are carrying significantly fewer titles, although evidence suggests that's true.

Paula Deen and Selling Books

While the headlines are about the businesses that are trying to distance themselves from Paula Deen (like her publisher Ballantine/Random House, book retailers Target and Walmart) Amazon reports pre-orders for her next book (due in October) and her current best-seller are #1 and #2 right now. What will Ballantine do? Not supply books?

Adobe Creative Cloud: Friend or Foe?

Certainly a lot of conversation about Adobe's Creative Suite becoming a subscription cloud application. According to this article, designers are extremely wary about the change but most printers deal with the problems as they encounter them and move on.

King's Print Only Book a Pirated Ebook

Stephen King thought his latest book Joyland should be available as a conventional book, sold through bookstores but a pirated ebook became available within days of its release. Lesson learned?

“I Hate Books!”

Anna North, the culture editor for Salon.com posted her thoughts on the ease of reading ebooks as compared to the old clunky way that made you do insipid things like turn pages. The culture editor? I assume she prefers .mp3s to live music also.

Tumblr Poetry

Apparently paid editors had poetry all wrong, and didn't understand the criteria people would judge it by, because it's thriving on Tumblr, where volunteer editors curate the verse, and whose motto is “Follow the World's Creators.” Click here to sign up.

Algonquin Continues Literary Tradition

Decades ago the Algonquin Hotel served as a meeting place for New York City's writers. Now, Simon & Schuster has worked with the hotel to create a S&S themed suite on the 7^th floor as well as present readings from some of its current authors.

Who Do You Link To?

A number of British authors and publishers are chastising some others in the industry for linking their web sites to Amazon or other online retailers, ignoring smaller brick and mortar booksellers.

              I Don't Get It

A reader of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest did a neat job of trimming their copy to remove all the page numbers. I have no idea what “freedoms” he was after but I'm pleased he seems free at last. And I do enjoy the far-ranging comments posted about his rebellion..

A Dearth of English Majors?

There's a growing sentiment in some political circles to decrease funding for some Liberal Arts programs since the employment situation for their majors can be erratic and perhaps that indicates that those areas of study offer less value to society.

But I was always pleasantly surprised by how many English majors (like myself) found their way into book manufacturing. Now it seems that even without political maneuvering a degree in English is losing its luster. I wonder where the Garrison Keillors of tomorrow will come from?

Final Thought

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.                                                                                         Oscar Wilde

Grub Street Printing Newsletter #50, June, 2013

While I'm not sure the fiftieth issue of this newsletter signifies very much (not even five years!), every time I begin to put together the next newsletter I reflect on who the recipients are and where their interests and talents lie.

For instance, many of my friends from the printing industry, both book and commercial, receive this newsletter each month. Many are still working on the shop floor, some still work in the industry but as free-lancers now, and some have left the industry all together and found new careers in other disciplines. Ironically, it is the latter group that contacts me most often.

And out East there's a former Harper Rowe editor who I believe could be persuaded to pick up a blue pencil again to tame an unruly manuscript.

One recipient is not only a publisher but an importer/manufacturer who fills his wholesale and retail orders from over 80,000 square feet of warehouse space. His company began many years ago when he would get home from his day job and and roll a Radio Shack TRS80 out of his closet, using a forerunner of the PC years before most believed the primitive computers of the day had any business applications.

Another distributes his books from a series of pole barns he's added to his property, often traveling to quiet corners of the Midwest with books for his Amish audience.

There are many, many astrologers who read the newsletter. It was a curious course of events that put me in touch with this group, but they are generous people who freely passed my name among themselves whenever an upcoming book was mentioned, and astrologers write (and buy) a lot of books.

There is a gentleman who for years supplied me with information about all things paper, now happily retired. While some paper reps came and went, he became the one who always had the answer, could offer advice when described the application, and endeared himself to our shop by bringing pizza for all. All this after years with a web press book manufacturer.

And I've stayed in touch with a wonderful group in California that collects donated technical books to ship and distribute in Asia.

My newsletter archive even has two people who follow each posting although I have no idea why it interests them.

But the majority of you are publishers and authors, often both. When sorting through thirty days of articles to report on and link to, my selection criteria is first and foremost, “Is this interesting to a book publisher? Will this influence the future of book publishing?”

Still, there are stories like the re-imagined library in Australia, or the mother who uses her Kindle as a bookmark that I include...well, just because.

Just received this article from Salon concerning the book industry seen through lens of the BEA.

 

Book Expo More Optimistic

Book Expo is opening in NYC as I write this. This preview describes a more hopeful attitude in the air compared to the past few years. And yes, NYC allows the publishers to throw some swell parties, but I still would like to see it in some other site in the future. The Big 6 can't dictate to the industry as they used to.

As If You Didn't Know

Over the past twenty-five years, beer prices have matched cost of living increases while book pricing has slightly decreased. Obviously textbooks weren't considered.

Magazines Popular on Campuses

Everyone's assumption that the first generation to grow up in a digital environment would shun ink and paper content for pixels. Everyone was wrong.

Kindle Fire Tablets Target Apple, Samsung

Amazon will make it's new Kindle Fire Tablet and HD 8.9” tablet available in over 170 new countries and will offer Android apps in 200 new regions in a challenge to counter Apple and Samsung's international market penetration. The Fire was previously offered in seven countries.

The Rebirth of Indies

As predicted after the demise of Borders, independent bookstores are beginning to re-appear, and regional chains are expanding. A co-owner of Ann Arbor's newest, Literati, remembers that Borders store #1 “was always a part of what made Ann Arbor”.

New Perspectives On Backlists

How many publishers employ half of their staff as marketers? How many “backlist only” publishers offer 3,000 titles, all as digital editions, plus a few in print? Open Road is that backlist publisher, and when a lost Pearl S. Buck manuscript was recently discovered in a storage locker, guess which publisher was first offered the opportunity to release it?

Crowdfunding Book Fairs and Books

Kickstarter is the most famous of the crowdfunding websites having raised over $600 million to fund 42,000 projects since 2009.The Sonoma County Book Fest is hoping for sufficient Kickstarter support to hold its 13^th Festival in September. Pubslush is a web site that focuses on funding for authors and publishers.

“New” J.R.R. Tolkein Book Released

J.R.R. Tolkein's unfinished and unpublished poem, The Fall of Arthur, has been released as a book. Tolkein's son Christopher has been working on the manuscript which was written in Old English alliterative meter and also in modern English.

Stephen King Releases Paper and Ink Novel

Although Stephen King released an “ebook only” novel in 2000 (“Riding the Bullet”), and his 2009 novel “Ur” focused on interacting with a Kindle, he has announced that his next novel , “Joyland” will be available as a printed book only without an ebook edition, ostensibly to buoy up sales at bookstores.

However...

A few days before “Joyland” is released, King will release a digital work through Apple's iBooks. While it is a digital book, “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County” includes music by John Mellencamp and T. Bone Burnett who teamed up with King to produce this “supernatural digital book musical”.

Paper Mill Fined

For all the strides the paper industry has made to become environmentally friendly, a Texas Temple Inland mill owned by International Paper has been fined $3.3 million for releasing “black liquor” into the Pearl River and causing an extensive fish kill. The liquid is generally recovered from processing pulp and reused inside the plant.

Rubber Stamp a Book?

While GalleyCat is all breathless about a “printing a book” with your children educational toy introduced at BEA, actually The Creative Company has issued a set of rubber stamps, which, I suppose, if you have the time and inclination you could produce a book with. I got my first Superior press when I was 10 (you set the rubber type with tweezers)...and I actually could have printed a book; if I started then it would have been finished about now.

Final Thought

“Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.” ― Stephen Fry

Grub Street Printing Newsletter #49: May 2013

I've collected books for a long time. I think I was a collector before I knew I was a collector. One day you just wake up and realize you have a few hundred books packed into your one bedroom apartment.

I'm not a “serious” collector, though. I don't dream about ribbed leather spines or first editions with pristine dust jackets and the authors signature on the title page. I collect books that I like, and once in awhile books that are outside my interest but have redeeming attributes, like a thumb notched 1930s cookbook (28 notched categories!) or a small guide to ships of the Great Lakes from 1968. Not a very sophisticated collector.

But last weekend I went to our local library's (The Hamburg Public Library) book sale. I'm never the first one in the door, and if I arrive before eleven I must be really hustling. Books are $3 per full grocery bag and they host sales every six months or so, which means you only live with a book that wasn't as good as expected for six months.

After I'd circled most of the tables of books (The Picture Cookbook by Life magazine 1962!) there was one table that had some fellow camped in front of it. I'd gone around behind him twice but his tortoise pace meant it would be another ten minutes before I could see the final few boxes. I checked out the audible books and CDs.

Finally he moved on and I walked over to the last boxes I'd not inspected. I looked over to see what the hell was taking him so long; reading the spines of twenty or so books wasn't very time consuming. Aha! He wasn't reading book spines. He was picking up books, turning them over and snapping a picture of their bar code with his smart phone. He then turned his phone over to check the book's price on Amazon (I'm guessing) and that would inform his decision whether or not to drop the book in his bag. It was “show-rooming” in reverse! He wasn't looking to buy low, he was looking to sell high. And judging by the nearly empty bag he toted, he wasn't having much luck. (I wonder if his competition was there when the doors opened?)

I sorted through my “new” books when I got home. Only one of my books had a bar code! To my mind the price checker may have missed the best books available. Curious, I checked some pricing on the internet and found that two of my books were available for over $30 on BookFinder.

I don't know why but it struck me as a real waste of time to scan book after book without seeing the title, the author, the year it was printed. At some level I accept books as commodities, but really! Even remainder houses have a sense of content.

Some days later I read about a book that I thought may be helpful for research on a project I'm working on, so naturally I again went to BookFinder (although it was available from a number of sources as a free download) . I was looking for the title Quaint Nantucket and it was published in 1896 so it's clearly in the public domain. This link should take you to my search results.

The first four options (displayed under the “New Books” heading) were for ebooks as .pdf for $9.99. And then there were some Print On Demand paperbacks starting at $17.20: plain text covers, uneven scans reproduced on a laser printer. Wow.

Even more surprising, the least expensive book under the “Used Books” listing was an actual 1901 copy. It was listed as “very good” condition. Then there were POD hardcover copies that started at a dollar and a half more and went progressively higher. I had to wonder how deep into digital editions someone would have to be if an unpredictable scan, reproduced with toner “ink” and bound cross grain that cost more than an actual copy of the original book made sense.

I know the writing, publishing, editing and retailing of current titles is in a state of flux, but older titles that were made by craftsman, edited by professionals and sold by people who loved the feel and smell of books aren't getting any respect and I don't know why.

Last minute addition: Too late for the newsletter, Claire Messud author of The Woman Upstairs, answers a question from the media about the “likability” of her protagonist. I think you'll enjoy her answer.

 

What You Should Know about Page Design

Thirty some years ago when I started making books, most publishers neglected to specify

page margins so production planners (aka “book engineers”) were taught very basic principles of page design. Today, whatever looks okay on the screen seems to be fine, but there are actually historic guides to assist the creation of attractive, easy to read pages.

West Virginia Schools to Read Sci-Fi?

A West Virginia state representative has introduced a bill to include science fiction reading as part of state school curricula in hopes it would encourage interest in math, engineering and the sciences. If it motivates kids to read I'm all for it. (Unfortunately, their fifth grade science camps, funded by the Defense Department, are facing the budget ax.)

Most Valuable Book in the World?

Well, it's certainly in the top tier. A copy of the Psalms printed in a run of 1,700 books in 1640 in Cambridge MA is expected to fetch around $30M at auction next fall.

Booksellers Keep Fighting

A group of brick-and-mortar book sellers have asked a court to deny a motion to dismiss their lawsuit for restraint of trade against Amazon and the big six NYC publishers.

Would You Like an Opinion?

Avon Romance has introduced Share Your Book. Authors will be able to upload excerpts from their writing for others to critique, with the promise that occasionally editors will poke around the offerings. Too early to tell if this will evolve into a helpful community or (more typically) losers who will flame everyone's submissions or interject their irrelevant political biases.

Re-Examining the Death of Books (and Publishers)

Predictably, Wired magazine sees doom and destruction in the book business as ebooks continue to redefine the industry. But a closer look at their conclusions paints a very different picture.

Leveling the Retail Field

Efforts to require collection of sales taxes on all internet transactions seem likely to succeed, offering some relief to Main Street retailers and ironically protecting Amazon from the next Amazon.

Kodak Ready to Emerge from Bankruptcy

After cutting a deal giving its UK pensioners its remaining photographic and imaging business, Kodak seems to have cleared the last hurdle to emerge from bankruptcy a much smaller version of its former self.

Even Better

Kodak announced it made a profit during the first quarter of 2013. Kodak hadn't posted a profitable quarter since 2010.

Xpedx to merge with Unisource

Although I reported xpedx was closing all of its paper supply stores last February, it's just been announced that xpedx and last surviving rival Unisource plan to merge and salvage what's left of the paper/printer supply retail industry.

Defending Captain Underpants

Each September I participate in recognizing the paranoia that leads to banning books during Banned Book Week. Now the American Library Association has listed the ten titles most frequently challenged in schools and libraries. Instead of Salinger, Vonnegut or Morrison, author Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants titles for 'tween readers ranks number one in complaints.

A New Weekly for Baton Rouge

The Newhouse family has announced it's beginning a new weekly newspaper in Baton Rouge, LA. Why? This story goes beyond the press release..

Amelia Turns 50!

Children's book icon Amelia Bedelia turned 50 this year. Like everything marketed today, her brand has been extended past Peggy Parish's (her creator) death in 1988 by her nephew who added twenty-seven titles to her canon. If you're not familiar with Amelia, above is a short video of Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping to share with your favorite youngster.

Adapting for Mobile

Some major publishers have released horrible mobile content. Here are some tips so that you don't.

Final Thought

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” Stephen King