BookFinder.com Journal

JustBooks.fr launches

It may not be quite as big a deal as the French Presidential Elections, but we have some big news of our own: the beta launch of JustBooks.fr, our new book search engine for French users, powered by BookFinder.com technology.

BookFinder.com has been offering French language search since 2002, largely “powered” by the remnants of my shaky high school French. We’ve been getting more serious over the past year, and Giovanni and I have been working with our French friends and colleagues to improve search quality, and increase the number of French sources searched. We’re excited to offer the best deals from Fnac, Amazon.fr, Alapage, AbeBooks.fr, PriceMinister, Livre-rare-book, as well as dozens of multinational marketplaces serving French users; the list will keep growing over the coming months. Check out the site, and let us know what you like, what we can improve, and what types of booksellers you’d like to see us add. Merci.

(Incidentally, I’m still disappointed at the abandonment of Bouqiniste, an excellent French used book market weblog that shut down a few months after I pointed it out here. Lately, I’ve been reading Libre-rare-book’s strangely-named corporate blog, Livre rare book, le Bla Bla…. Know of any other interesting French bookselling blogs? Let me know.)

[Now reading A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr]

Posted by Anirvan

ChooseBooks advertisements

The folks at ChooseBooks.com are throwing some money into print marketing. Possibly the #4 traditional American used book marketplace, and a subsidiary of German market leader ZVAB, ChooseBooks has been venturing into the exciting world of full-page magazine advertising.

Some of the ads are decent, e.g. this advertisement on page 403 of the January 2007 issue of PMLA (PDF, 1.4MB). Though the ad’s “It’s Your Choice! Professional Booksellers at Your Service!” tagline seems a bit hyperactive, it’s still reasonably tasteful and informative.

This full page ad on page 19 of the March 26, 2007 issue of The Nation (JPEG, 367k), on the other hand, reads like a parody of a Teaching Company advertorial:

Choose Books!

After all, “Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.” Barbara Tuchman

Do you buy Used, Rare, Antiquarian or Out-of-Print Books? Most likely you do, and have, in the past, visited used bookstores. Without a doubt, you are familiar with wonderful look of leather bound volumes carefully arranged on shelves or stacks of books scattered everywhere. And yes, you feel exhilaration of a search and a thrill of a find when you stumble upon that long sought book that you remember from childhood.

It gets worse. I know Michael Tokman, the founder of ChooseBooks. Michael’s a smart guy. I know for a fact that in real life, he doesn’t Speak In Capitals, or use confusing, disjointed logic:

And who better to speak about their services than Michael Tokman, one of the people responsible for bringing this wonderful resource to the book buying public: “We share your love for Used, Rare, Antiquarian and Out-of-Print Books, as well as Autographs, Maps and Ephemera Items. Not only that, but geographical diversity of our booksellers resulted in the unique inventory, rich in books from various countries and in many languages.”

I have a lot of respect for the ChooseBooks.com/ZVAB team. I hope this was a one-time test ad, delivered in a rush on a day when the copyeditor was out sick; they can do so much better.

[Now reading The Secret Police and the Revolution: The Fall of the German Democratic Republic by Edward N. Peterson]

Posted by Anirvan

Link roundup

In the news:

• The New York Times is running a story on how booksellers are dealing with the US Postal Service’s decision to end international surface mail for individual customers.
• North Carolina legislator proposes making textbooks tax-free

From the blogs:

• UC Berkeley doctoral student Jo Guldi writes on how Google Book Search has become a surprisingly important research tool.
• Comparing the various new Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows covers…
• “‘Did you bring it?’ she asked, her voice deep, but tinged with silver, like the swiftly flowing streams in the mountains around there. ‘Right here’ I said, patting my coat pocket.” James Bond-style bookseller fiction…
• Lucas from Bookselling Online Blog may be retiring…

Websites of interest:

• Book Sale Finder, a list of local book sales across the US and Canada (no relation to us). An oldie-but-goodie…
• Joel Spolsky explains why end-users don’t read, a chapter of his book User Interface Design for Programmers

From the extended family:

• AbeBooks reports on books being read by overseas soldiers stationed in Iraq
• LibraryThing offers a sneak peek at its new widgets for library OPACs. I’m really looking forward to seeing the final release version of this.

Posted by Anirvan

*sigh*

It was a disappointing day.

BookFinder.com was down for about 3 hours this mornings due to a server problem. (Sorry for the inconvenience.) We work to provide 99.9% uptime (i.e. less than 9 hours total downtime per year, including downtime from planned upgrades); unplanned downtime makes it that much harder for us to hit our goal.

In local bookselling news, it turns out that Cody’s Books will be shutting down their exciting new downtown San Francisco store, just a year and a half after it opened. The original Cody’s on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue used to be my favorite bookstore; its closing came as a shock. There’s still the Cody’s on 4th Street in Berkeley, a quick bus ride away from BookFinder.com’s downtown Berkeley office. I’ve been to that store a couple of times now, but it’s just not the same.

Posted by Anirvan

Recent interviews

I did an interview with British book industry news website The Bookseller a couple of weeks ago. Phone-based interviews are interesting and sometimes a bit disconcerting. I’m always scared, wondering whether I’m going to be quoted verbatim, or if the writer will be kind enough to cut out all the parts where I’m sounding less than polished. (I was on NPR’s Morning Edition about two years ago, and the editors slashed a 10 minute interview into a couple of short sentences. I was elated—I didn’t sound stupid on national radio.)

It’s interesting seeing how The Bookseller transcribed my interview, and how I seem to devolve from sounding serious and stilted (“gives us access to industry-specific consulting, support, and advice, which has helped us accelerate our growth plans”) to sloppy and colloquial (“we started having people using the site and discovering for themselves that it was pretty cool”). I need to even out those extremes.

I did a fun podcast interview with Paula B. from the The Writing Show, an radio-style interview-based program about writing and books. The hour-long program went online today, but I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet; though I’ve enjoyed listening to Paula’s other interviews, it’s strange listening to myself drone on and on. Do I really sound like that?

For anyone who can stand to listen to it — what can I be doing better?

[Now reading A People’s History of Science: Miners, Midwives and ‘Low Mechanicks’ by Clifford D. Conner]

Posted by Anirvan