Used Books

In a recent sale catalog, one bookseller apologized for the condition of a sixteenth-century volume as "rather soiled by use." When the book was displayed the next year, the exhibition catalogue described it as "well and piously used [with] marginal notations in an Elizabethan hand [that] bring to life an early and earnest owner"; and the book's buyer, for his part, considered it to be "enlivened by the marginal notes and comments." For this collector, as for an increasing number of cultural historians and historians of the book, a marked-up copy was more interesting than one in pristine condition. William H. Sherman recovers a culture that took the phrase "mark my words" quite literally. Books from the first two centuries of printing are full of marginalia and other signs of engagement and use, such as customized bindings, traces of food and drink, penmanship exercises, and doodles. These marks offer a vast archive of information about the lives of books and their place in the lives of their readers. Based on a survey of thousands of early printed books, Used Books describes what readers wrote in and around their books and what we can learn from these marks by using the tools of archaeologists as well as historians and literary critics. The chapters address the place of book-marking in schools and churches, the use of the "manicule" (the ubiquitous hand-with-pointing-finger symbol), the role played by women in information management, the extraordinary commonplace book used for nearly sixty years by Renaissance England's greatest lawyer-statesman, and the attitudes toward annotated books among collectors and librarians from the Middle Ages to the present. This wide-ranging, learned, and often surprising book will make the marks of Renaissance readers more visible and legible to scholars, collectors, and bibliophiles.

If you have ever considered opening a used bookstore, here is your chance to learn from someone who knows first-hand what it takes. Author Stephanie Chandler is the owner of Book Lovers Bookstore in Sacramento, CA. Features in this workbook include: *Worksheets: Budget planning, evaluating competition, forecasting, and more. *Business Basics: What you need to get started. *Inventory: Twelve sources for acquiring used books. *Suppliers: Library supplies, printed goods, retail supplies and more. *Shop Setup: Store layout, book categories, bookseller software and tools. *Operations Procedures: Trade policies, overstock, and a sample operations manual. *Marketing: Low-cost and no-cost tactics for maximizing exposure. *Website: Steps for setting up a website and selling books online. *Resources: Dozens of useful website links. *Business Plan: Sample business plan (actual plan used for Book Lovers Bookstore).

With the Internet growing at a phenomenal rate, and E-commerce quickly becoming the norm, now is the time to take your dream of becoming a bookseller to the online world. This book will teach you, step by step, everything you need to know to succeed. You''ll learn where to buy your books, how to clean and care for them, what software is available for your online business, how and where to market your books, and how to develop long term relationships with your customers. Start living your dream by putting the advice in this book into action in your life!

The book publishing industry is going through a period of profound and turbulent change brought about in part by the digital revolution. What is the role of the book in an age preoccupied with computers and the internet? How has the book publishing industry been transformed by the economic and technological upheavals of recent years, and how is it likely to change in the future? This is the first major study of the book publishing industry in Britain and the United States for more than two decades. Thompson focuses on academic and higher education publishing and analyses the evolution of these sectors from 1980 to the present. He shows that each sector is characterized by its own distinctive ‘logic’ or dynamic of change, and that by reconstructing this logic we can understand the problems, challenges and opportunities faced by publishing firms today. He also shows that the digital revolution has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on the book publishing business, although the real impact of this revolution has little to do with the ebook scenarios imagined by many commentators. Books in the Digital Age will become a standard work on the publishing industry at the beginning of the 21st century. It will be of great interest to students taking courses in the sociology of culture, media and cultural studies, and publishing. It will also be of great value to professionals in the publishing industry, educators and policy makers, and to anyone interested in books and their future.

A memoir of the used book business in Iowa City, Iowa, UNESCO's "City of Literature."

First Published in 1996. This encyclopedia is unique in several ways. As the first international reference source on publishing, it is a pioneering venture. Our aim is to provide comprehensive discussion and analysis of key subjects relating to books and publishing worldwide. The sixty-four essays included here feature not only factual and statistical information about the topic, but also analysis and evaluation of those facts and figures. The chapters are significantly more comprehensive than those typically found in an encyclopedia.