Tag Archives: bookstores

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Bookselling

So Am I as the Rich?

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Some people can tell you their favorites easily. They seek them out often. Their favorite shirts are the ones they wear all the time. Their favorite meals they eat several times a year, or if that’s too expensive, at least annually for a birthday. I’m the type who doesn’t wear his favorite shirt so that it will last longer. I wear lesser shirts that can wear out. A favorite I’ll don for special occasions. It’s not the same for meals. I would eat favorite foods often, but I like many different things. Sure, that cake you made for my birthday was delicious. You made it last year too, and it was great. Maybe this year we make a different delicious cake.

So, like the speaker in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 52, I don’t frequent my treasures often “for blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.”

“Blessèd are you whose worthiness gives scope,
  Being had, to triumph, being lacked, to hope.”

What links do we have today?

Shelby Steele: Author Shelby Steele and filmmaker Eli Steele discuss their ideas on power, race, and America with City Journal. “We have wealth; now we want innocence—that’s where power lies at the moment. So much of our politics and culture really come out of this struggle with innocence,” the author states. By innocence, he means the moral justification for authority and the exercise of power.

Book towns: Richard George William Pitt Booth MBE (1938-2019) said libraries couldn’t keep up with today’s publishing industry, and thus “the future of the book is in book towns,” such as the one he inspired in Hay-on-Wye, Wales. Bloggers Sophie Pearce and Sophie Nadeau both visited and took photos for their travel sites.

Ugly Buildings: “There is nothing so obvious that it cannot be denied.”

Spam: “The nostalgic valances that stem from that salty, pink block of luncheon meat go way back for some of us, not least because it represents a very specific experience: what it was like growing up in America with immigrant parents.”

Poets: Irish poet Maurice Scully died last year, “a true original in the world of Irish poetry, quietly and patiently doing things his own way for several decades.”

Photo: Newman’s Drug Store in New York, 1976. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Bookselling

Beautiful Bookstores in London

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Here’s a bit of Monday tourism via desk for you: London’s prettiest, most picturesque bookstores. The image below was taken in Liberia, which prohibits using your phone like this, so images like this are subversive acts of rebellion. Notice the reflective ceiling multiplies the store’s bookish enchantment. You can see more of this wonderful little place in the 360 degree image on their website.

Bookselling

Momentous day

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Twice a year, I experience a major moment of accomplishment at work. That is the day I finally get all the assigned textbooks onto the shelves of the campus bookstore. Today was that day. Since this was also the first regular class day, it was none too soon.

Openly, and without fear or favor, I shall identify my biggest problem. It was Harper Collins Publishers, which owns, among its posse of subordinate religious houses, Zondervan and Thomas Nelson. I sent a lot of orders their way this fall, and I can’t fault HC for promptitude in delivery. The books came with dispatch (though they could improve their carton sealing procedures. One box was split open, though no books were lost).

The problem was their billing. Usually in this life we complain that bills come too soon. “The bill’s here already?” we say. “I just took delivery!”

But it’s different in my wild and crazy world. If I were like those bloated capitalists who run the average bookstore, I’d pause from lighting my cigars with $500 dollar bills to slap the suggested retail price on every book, then sit back and rake in the obscene profits. But at the schools of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, we just add a small percentage markup to the wholesale cost, and pass the savings onto the customer. If we get a good deal, the buyer gets the benefit. That’s how we Free Lutherans roll.

But I can’t do perform that process if I don’t have the full cost of each book order. Many publishers include an invoice in the carton, or state the total cost (including shipping and handling) in the packing list. Harper Collins, however, does not do that. Their invoices finally arrived in the mail today, and I was able at last to price all our new books.

Then I performed some librarian magic to get the seminary dean a copy of an old journal article he wanted. Before I checked it out, I didn’t even know I could do that.

I need a medal. Some kind of an achievement award.

I’ll take a donut. Anybody got a donut?