San Francisco’s Borderland Books, which currently makes only $3,000 profit annually, will be closing by the end of March, because the city’s voters passed a minimum wage hike, effectively putting a favorite bookstore out of business. One customer is quoted saying he didn’t think the wage hike would affect certain small businesses. Another said he loved the store and hoped it wouldn’t close.
Category Archives: Bookselling
Photos of Unique Bookstores Around the World
The Guardian has these photos of bookstores described by that fun, book culture author, Jen Campbell, in her book, Books Are My Bag. From that collection: “Fjaerland is one of Norway’s Book Towns near Jostedalsbreen, the largest glacier in mainland Europe. Old sheds, houses and even a hotel have been converted into bookshops. “During the winter, the bookshop owners have to transport the books from place to place, over the snow, on kick-sleds,” says Campbell.”
They also share a photo of this remarkable pile of rare and otherwise books in Detroit. It’s Michigan’s largest used bookstore.
Iceland’s Christmas Book Flood
NPR’s Jordan Teicher reports, “Historically, a majority of books in Iceland are sold from late September to early November. It’s a national tradition, and it has a name: Jolabokaflod, or the ‘Christmas Book Flood.’
“‘The culture of giving books as presents is very deeply rooted in how families perceive Christmas as a holiday,’ says Kristjan B. Jonasson, president of the Iceland Publishers Association. ‘Normally, we give the presents on the night of the 24th and people spend the night reading. In many ways, it’s the backbone of the publishing sector here in Iceland.'”
How (Not) to Be Secular by J.K.A. Smith Wins CT’s 2015 Book Awards
Many titles are recommended in today’s list of Christianity Today’s 2015 Book Awards, among them is James K.A. Smith’s work on Charles Taylor’s How to Be Secular. Smith makes Taylor’s work accessible to a broader audience and adds a good bit of commentary himself.
In the fiction category, CT picks Lila by Marilynne Robinson and The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd.
“Robinson slowly unfolds the story of Lila, a woman not quite defeated by a brutal, hardscrabble life, who discovers hope and security as the wife of an elderly pastor. Together, they wrestle with questions of the meaning of existence and the ultimate fate of humanity. Readers who loved Robinson’s earlier novel, Gilead, will discover the same breathtaking writing, beautifully painted scenes, and strong working knowledge of theology.” —Cindy Crosby, author of By Willoway Brook
And on The Invention of Wings:
“Based on the life of abolitionist Sarah Grimke and a fictional slave girl, Handful, the novel skillfully joins fiction and history, African American resilience and Southern white hypocrisy, Charlestonian exuberance and Quaker idealism. Kidd reminds us that the foundation of social injustice is ordinary human selfishness.” —Betty Smartt Carter, author of Home Is Always the Place You Just Left
SALE: The System Has a Soul by Hunter Baker
“What relevance does Christianity have in our societal system? What place does the church have in a system that so often seems to be ordered only by the ultra-complex machinery of state power and corporate strategy?”
Hunter Baker answers these questions and more in his collection of essays, The System Has a Soul: Essays on Christianity, Liberty, and Political Life. Get it today for almost half-price.
Le Guin: ‘Resistance and Change Often Begin in the Art of Words’
Author Ursula Le Guin received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at this week’s National Book Awards and inspired the crowd by holding up freedom as an author’s best prize. “We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.”
She said many things needed to change, and that change often begins in art, specifically the art of words. Writing books according to marketing formulas for corporate profit is a rotten idea, she said. We need artists.
Her speech was short, so you can easily watch the whole thing here.
In an interview, Le Guin said, “If you’re going to create a world out of whole cloth, that is to say, out of words, then you better get the words right.” You can read about her and her many books in The Guardian.
New Catholic Literature Prize
The new George W. Hunt Prize, sponsored by America magazine and Yale University’s Saint Thomas More Chapel, will recognize a variety of accomplished literature from Roman Catholics. The judges appear to be looking for good, expressly Catholic works by authors who lead moral lives.
“We’re trying to promote new creative thinking,” Beloin told The Washington Post’s Ron Charles. “Catholic theology is a very wide umbrella — or at least it’s supposed to be.” The Hunt Prize will be awarded to an author who is “trying to write things that are true — to bring a fresh language to theology, to bring real creativity to intellectual life and Catholic imagination.” (via Literary Saloon)
Authors Union Seeks Investigation into Amazon.com
The Authors Guild met with the Justice Department in August to request a federal investigation into Amazon.com’s actions against Hachette Book Group in their ongoing dispute over ebook prices and service fees. They say the earth’s largest bookdealer is using anti-trust tactics against publishers like Hachette. Authors United is also preparing to ask the DOJ to get involved. Does this make you want to find other bookseller options, or is this all so inside baseball you don’t care?
Self-Publishing: Too Many Little Fish in a Huge Sea
Ron Charles, editor of The Washington Post’s Book World, asked Roger Sutton, editor in chief of Horn Book magazine, about reviewing self-published books.
Charles asked, “What do you say to the indie writer who reminds you that Walt Whitman was self-published?”
“You are not Walt Whitman,” Sutton said. “The 21st century is different in so many ways from the 19th that the comparison is meaningless. No one is forbidding you from self-publishing, but neither is anyone required to pay attention.”
Charles reviewed Sutton’s recently expressed concerns over the glut of self-published books vying for place in our hands. Are there bound to be some great books out there? Yes, but there are too many bad one that look like it from a professional reviewer’s outpost. The school of the self-published will only grow, and perhaps a new system of reviewing and judging will be organized to help readers find good books. Sutton isn’t convinced it will matter. “People are more interested in writing self-published books than in reading them.”
Ouch.
Possibly an Overreaction to Banning Books?
Alan Noble says that Springs Charter School story may be an overreaction. In fact, the school says, “We can and do provide educational books with religious perspectives, including Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place.”
The school statement continues: “However, like every other public school in the State of California, we cannot legally maintain religious textbooks on our warehouse shelves for distribution to our families. Donated items are made available to our families at no cost. Any and all donated items are not incorporated onto the shelves of our Curriculum Warehouse. The only materials we maintain on the shelves of our Curriculum Warehouse are items we have purchased ourselves in accordance with the laws of our State.”
Noble asks, “Did the Superintendent make this clear in the letter she sent to PJI? That much is not clear, since PJI didn’t actually post her letter online.” But the Super does appear to be a practicing catholic, not a opponent of faith.