BookFinder.com Journal

Free Book Repair Training Manual

I just found this and thought that some beginner booksellers or collectors might find this of use.  The Alaska State Library published a manual on book repair.  It is an e-book and can be downloaded for free from the Alaska State Library site.  It also appears that you may print it out for your own use as well as long as you are not selling it.

Hopefully this can be useful to some of our readers.

The Nook e-reader

Released today is Barnes and Noble's entry into the e-reader wars.  Dubbed "The Nook" it combines a color navigation panel (for browsing color book covers) with a 6" e-ink screen, mp3, and support for a number of non-proprietary formats including ePub and PDF. 

Like the Kindle ,The Nook is wireless with the added feature that it seems you can share books with friends over a variety of other devices (iPhones, Blackberry's, etc) if you download some free software. The Nook however does not have the Kindles text to speech, has a shorter battery life, and is a bit heavier.  The one piece of information I have not yet found is if the divice is supported outside of the US, drop a comment if you find out.

Several major news sources have been reviewing The Nook and are suggesting that it might give the Kindle a run for its money.  We shall see what happens this Christmas I suppose.

If you want to see it at work Gizmodo, posted a neat video.  I will be posting some more Nook specs on our E-books page tomorrow.

[Now Reading: Following the Equator by Mark Twain]

Google president lies like a cheap rug

Not sure if any of you read the advertorial op-ed column in the New York Times last week where Google Technology President Sergey Brin voiced his thoughts on the Google books campaign but one sentence really irked me.

Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice — fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks.

He cannot possibly believe that? All you have to do is type "Out-of-print books" into his own service and see AbeBooks, Alibris, Amazon, Biblio, BookFinder, etc offering more OOP options that you could shake a virtual stick at.  The rest of the article reads like a cheap advertorial.

I'm not even versed enough in the whole Google Books rights controversy to say whether i'm for or against it (note: book lunch with Charlie, learn more) but this essay is trash.

[Now Reading: Our Man in Havana by Grahame Greene]

Herta Müller translations in high demand

This morning, or evening if you happen to be in Europe,Herta Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Müller originally published in Romanian and German however her works have been translated into several languages, including English.  Most of these translations have been though small presses and now an increase in demand for her work is causing some temporary shortages in supply.

I just checked Amazon, and they appeared to be out of stock with many of her English translations but you can still find used copies from various booksellers.  So I thought I would post some links for people looking for Herta Müller translations.

Herta Müller English Translations

Herta Müller Deutsch Übersetzungen

Herta Müller Nederlandse vertalingen

Herta Müller une traduction en français

Herta Müller las traducciones al español

*edit* - I also just checked on AbeBooks.com and it seems that copies are flying off the virtual shelves there as well.  If you don't want to wait for the reprints I would pick one up sooner than later.

BookFinder.com Report near misses

So now that the BookFinder.com report has been available online for a few weeks, I wanted to mention a few of the interesting books which we were forced to cut from the list.  By this I don't mean all of the thousands of in print books but rather books which nearly made the cut, I mentioned one such book in a post way back when I first started researching this years Report but there were many more.

One example is Dead in Dixie by Charlaine Harris which is technically out-of-print however after a short discussion we decided to leave this one off the list.  You see the book is an omnibus edition of the first three novels in Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series.  All three books are still available and a boxed set  as well as individual editions so we decided that Dead in Dixie failed to qualify.

Perhaps more interesting was The Essential Woodworker by Robert Wearing.  This book was last published in 1998 and is most definitely out-of-print, but was only ever printed in England.  So even though buyers in the US are eagerly looking for this book, and there are no new copies being printed, technically, we could not include in the list as it has never been in print in the United States.

The title which I was the most displeased with having to leave off the 2009 BookFinder.com report was Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: the story of Irena Sendler by Anna Mieszkowska.  This would have been our number one Biography however this book was also never printed in the US. 

The book details the work of Sendler who was a social worker who served in the Polish Underground during the German occupation and saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto.  Copies are very hard to track down and at the time of writing this post there are no copies available on BookFinder.com.  If you like you can keep checking back here, but unless we see a reprinting I would not hold my breath

Outside of the great story within what made this book so interesting was that despite the fact it had never been printed in the US it was adapted into a "Hallmark Hall of Fame production", titled The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler and broadcast on CBS April 19, 2009.   With that kind of press and huge search volume, I think a publisher could do well with a North American reprinting.

Google Book Settlement on hold

It's been hard to keep up with what's happening with the Google Book's settlement, but US Department of Justice recommending against the deal might have been the straw that breaks the camel's back. There is now a new deal in the works.

Banned books and challenges

It's Banned Books Week very shortly and as a ramp up I was looking at some material about which books had been banned or challenged in the past few years, which is where I came across this map.  I think it's really interesting to see, partly because I thought I might see a state or region pushing ahead in the number of bans, but in reality it almost looks like the population distribution.  So much for my conspiracy theories.

Strangely enough no one found anything shocking enough to challenge in Las Vegas, go figure.

BookFinder.com Report 7 released

We have released the 2009 edition of the BookFinder.com Report.

The Report tracks the most sought-after out-of-print books in America, breaking down demand for popular out-of-print titles in ten different genre categories.

As usual this edition features a number of books with very interesting stories:

• Cop Without a Badge by Charles Kipps, had a sudden spike in demand after a run in with The Real Housewives of New Jersey
• The Recently Deflowered Girl by Edward Gorey, got a second wind on the back of an internet meme
• Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins, a conspiracy theory propped up by the economic collapse

There are many more so go ahead and read the whole 2009 BookFinder.com Report

Also if any of you are interested I will be on CBC Radio One tomorrow (September 17th) on the All Points West program between 3:30-4:00pm PST.  I will be talking to Jo-Ann Roberts about the BookFinder.com Report.  If you like you can listen online here.

BookFinder.com OpenSearch plugin

If you ever wanted to add a BookFinder.com OpenSearch plugin the option is now available.

If you are about to ask "What's OpenSearch" it's that small search box to the right of the URL display on your browser.  Here you can automatically search on your favorite website (obviously BookFinder.com, right?) without having to first enter their URL. If you want to add BookFinder.com as one of your search options It's very easy to do. 

In Firefox simply go to the BookFinder.com homepage and then click on the small downward facing arrow like so:

From here just click the "Add "BookFinder.com" button and voila, instant BookFinder.com searches from anywhere on the internet.

In Internet Explorer the procedure is the same and the screen should look like this: 

Now whenever you want to compare prices with BookFinder.com you can immediately do a keyword search from wherever you happen to be on the web without having to load our homepage.

Ebooks environmental?

A study was released this week proclaiming that ebooks were the magic bullet solution to greener reading.  The Cleantech Group (who commissioned the study) claimed that the carbon emitted in the life cycle of the ereader was fully offset after a year of use, or 22.5 books. 

The report indicates that, on average, the carbon emitted in the lifecycle of a Kindle is fully offset after the first year of use.

The report, authored by Emma Ritch, states: "Any additional years of use result in net carbon savings, equivalent to an average of 168 kg of CO2 per year (the emissions produced in the manufacture and distribution of 22.5 books)."

In the United States, Amazon currently holds a 45 percent market share of e-reader devices, with one main competitor Sony trailing at 30 percent.

The Cleantech Group forecasts that e-readers purchased from 2009 to 2012 could prevent 5.3 billion kg of carbon dioxide in 2012, or 9.9 billion kg during the four-year time period.

The Daily Finance, however, published a rebuttle yesterday suggesting that these figures may be a bit of an exageration.  They suggested that many "average" readers would read less than the suggested 22-23 books a year, and that if you compare ereaders to digital music players most consumers upgrade or replace their device well before the four year lifecycle that the study suggests.

I think the takeaway is that of course an ebook is going to reduce the amount of paper waste, but you also have to take the impact of whatever electronics you use to read it into account as well.  And  if ebooks are not for you then there are always used books!

Books that should not have been written

This morning Wired listed the top 5 Science Fiction/Fantasy books which were written by great authors but were awful books.  You can check out Wired's reasoning by clicking though but the general theme seems to be that these are the books where each author lost sight of what made their writing or their series great.

1. To Sail Beyond the Sunset by Robert Heinlein
2. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
3. Narcissus in Chains by Laurell K. Hamilton
4. Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman
5. MasterHarper of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

So have you ever come across a great author that you loved, except for that one absolute turkey of a book they wrote.  Either email me (my name at bookfinder dot com) or add a comment with your thoughts.  This can be any genre, and doesn't necessarily have to just be science fiction or fantasy but you have to like the author, just not this book(s).

[Now Reading: The Van by Roddy Doyle]

Sony Reader to adopt ePub format

The New York Times is reporting that Sony will be selling ebooks for their reader in the open ePub format only.  This means that they will also be scrapping "proprietary anticopying software in favor of technology from the software maker Adobe that restricts how often e-books can be shared or copied."

This means that books purchased after the change will be able to be read on a variety of other ereaders, opening up options for consumers.

“There is going to be a proliferation of different reading devices, with different features and capabilities and prices for a different set of consumer requirements,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading unit. “If people are going to this e-book shopping mall, they are going to want to shop at all the stores, and not just be required to shop at one store.”

Sony opening up to a common standard creates a very different playing field in the ebooks market.  As Charlie mentioned last week Sony just came out with a cheaper version of its ereader, and the Times suggests that a reader with wireless capability is also on its way.  It seems the ebook wars are far from over.

(Thanks to GallyCat for the tip)

Booker prize betting baffles bookies

Having just gotten back to the office after a week away I'm catching up on my news, so my apologies if this is old hat for you. 

When the Booker Prize long list was announced the other week the usual guessing on who would win started to take place.  The bookmakers all posted their odds and the punters began dropping their bets like usual.  However, as the Telegraph reported last week, betting patterns have been anything but ordinary with 95% of all bets being placed on Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.

"It's almost like an unspoken psychic rumour has gone round that this will be Hilary Mantel's year," spokesman Graham Sharpe said, as the odds were cut from 12/1 to make it the clear 2/1 favourite.

"We'll lose a five figure sum if the support continues. It is as though a tip has gone around the literary world telling everyone that Mantel is a certainty.

In the last couple years the odds on favorite has not won, however there has not been this level of interest in Booker Betting since 2002 when Yan Martel's Life of Pi was bet on as if it were a shoe in. 

"Quite a lot of them (people placing the bets) are what we would describe as literary insiders," he said.

"Nobody quite seems to know why."

But he ruled out the notion of any foul play, saying: "It would be unusual for the judges to know who they were picking as the eventual winner already. I would be very, very surprised if the judges had already decided.

"It's not in the realms of crying foul or anything like that, it may be just a case of a lot of people deciding on the same one at the same time."

He added it was "very, very rare to see this type of gamble" and said it was "definitely the biggest Booker gamble since Life of Pi was backed as though defeat was out of the question a few years ago".

William Hill's latest 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction odds are:

:: 2/1 Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall;

:: 4/1 Colm Toibin - Brooklyn;

:: 4/1 Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger;

:: 6/1 JM Coetzee - Summertime;

:: 6/1 James Lever - Me Cheeta;

:: 10/1 AS Byatt - The Children's Book;

:: 12/1 William Trevor - Love and Summer;

:: 14/1 Ed O'Loughlin - Not Untrue & Not Unkind;

:: 14/1 Simon Mawer - The Glass Room;

:: 16/1 Adam Foulds - The Quickening Maze,

:: 16/1 Sarah Hall - How to Paint a Dead Man,

:: 16/1 Samantha Harvey - The Wilderness;

:: 16/1 James Scudamore - Heliopolis.

I'm not a betting man but if I were I would put my money down on AS Byatt, I think she's the dark horse in this race (it should be known I have failed to call every booker I have atempted).  How about the rest of you Journal readers, who do you think will win this years Booker?

Sony's new ebook readers

There are so many ebook readers out these days it's hard to keep track. There's no doubt though, that Amazon's Kindle has garnered the most attention. Sony though, is fighting back with two new ereaders.

In fact, both actually rather remind me of an ipod in terms of design. The pocket edition looks like an traditional ipod, the touch...well...looks like sortof like an ipod touch. Styling aside though, the pocket edition seems to be trading on it's low price, it's only $199, while the touch is able to highlight and save notes. As hothardware notes, this seems to aim directly at the college crowd. Now, both still lack any built in networking like the Kindle (no wifi or cellphone), but oooh..they come in pretty colors.

School books get a little greener

Because I like to start my day out with some good news.  Here is a neat article about a company in the UK who are making school exercise books out of a sugar cane byproduct rather than conventional wood-based pulp, and the best feature is that the books are no more expensive.

From the BBC

Ms Teal said using agricultural crops rather than wood gave the added advantage of reducing deforestation, and helped protect fragile ecosystems that would otherwise break down as a result of logging in forested areas.

"In this instance it costs no more to buy an eco-friendly green product than a conventional wood-based paper product," said Ms Teal.

"The Consortium is the first supplier to source this product and with sustainability becoming increasingly important in the classroom, we think that once schools have tried these exercise books, there will be no going back."

I hope the project has legs, if it works out well we may see publishers start producing textbooks from this material as well.