BookFinder.com Journal

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Recently we've been working with our friends over at LibraryThing.com on a project to help their users more easily find the books that they need. 

Now when you find a cool book on someones LibraryThing shelf, you only have to click "Get this book" from the side bar and BookFinder.com will find new, used, and rare copies from our bookstores.  It looks kind of like this...

 

LT's Tim Spalding details the full depth of their project in an extensive post on LibraryThing's blog.  We're just excited to help!

 

Anirvan: saying goodbye

I've been working on BookFinder.com for almost 13 years now, but even the most amazing experiences come to an end. I'll be exiting BookFinder.com in August, heading out on the very best of terms, and after years of planning to ensure that our users aren't impacted by the transition.

BookFinder.com started off as my class project in 1996. My best friend Charlie built the 486 computer that it ran on, and we teamed up in 1999 to rewrite the software and run the site as our small business. We've been together every step of the way, designing, building, and managing BookFinder.com (and debating books and politics over lunch every day). I'm delighted to be able to pass my role on to him; the site's in incredibly good hands.

I've been planning to step back for several years now, to work on other projects, travel, and explore new opportunities. Please stay in touch:

• via my homepage and weblog
• via email, to anirvan (at) chatterjee (dot) net

I'm deeply grateful to the bibliophiles, booksellers, and marketplace operators I've worked with over the years. I've heard some pretty amazing stories, and I always promised myself that when I had some time, I'd try to collect and share them with others.

That's why I'm launching the Online Bookselling History Project, an effort to collect first-hand accounts of the online bookselling trade before 2000. If you were involved with the trade pre-2000, then I want your stories: bookseller BBSes, UIEE conversion nightmares, changing cataloging practices, the bricks vs. clicks debates, etc. You can help put together a patchwork history of our trade during a time of great transition. More on this soon.

— Anirvan Chatterjee

P.S. Thank you to everyone who's been part of BookFinder.com since 1996 -- Alison, Asok, Barbara, Boris, Bryan, Chaitee, Charlie, Christine, David, Fredrik, Garner, Giovanni, Hannes, Scott, Shaku, Shauna, Thomas, Tushar, Vanessa, and Wendy. I'm lucky to have friends like you.

[Now Reading: Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh]

Books as a social pursuit

It came to my attention that I have been neglecting those of you who who have absolutely no desire to learn about ereaders so today I promise this is the last you will hear about them from me.  Today instead I thought I would share two articles about reading and how it can effect your social life. 

If you belong to a book club you may be happy to learn that and an an increasing number of authors are jobbing their way around various book clubs to discuss, with their readers, what they thought of the novel.  I think it might take away from the whole book club process if you bring the author in right away but after a discussion about the book, getting to actually ask the author questions about the text could be a really neat experience, and a good reason to read and coming authors. 

From The Daily Beast:

There is a thing authors do, nervously, when they think no one is looking. They check out their numbers—online sales figures, ratings, rankings, reader reviews. Not long ago, Joshua Henkin, a professor of creative writing at Sarah Lawrence and Brooklyn College, was doing just such a thing in his home office. He was scrolling through Goodreads.com, monitoring the reception of his new novel, Matrimony. A user named Shelley had given him a mixed review—three stars out of five. Henkin clicked on her name and decided to email her, offering to attend her book club, if she had one. She did—that very evening—and, after several exchanges, Henkin was set to call into it.

And then moving from from friends recommending a good book, to books recommending a good friend.  LibraryThing.com and the aforementioned Goodreads.com have shown that this works pretty well but The Guardian thinks that relationships based on books should stay at the friend level.  The British paper takes a pot shot, in a fairly amusing article, at Boarders launching its dating service for bibliophiles suggesting that looking for love based on reading tastes can only lead to heartache. 

Oh, the first couple of dates would go fine: you'd huddle over coffees or beers, discussing with animated, shining eyes your love of, say, Haruki Murakami. Then, as things progress, you might go for a weekend away, perhaps walking hand-in-hand down the narrow streets of Hay-on-Wye. Reclining by a roaring fire in a country pub, something like pride would flutter in your breast as you watch the way your new love's lips move slightly as they read. Then the rot would set in. "You thought Wind-Up Bird Chronicle meant what?" "Actually, I did discover Murakami three years before you." "Yes, but I read Norwegian Wood in the original Japanese …"

And before things started to go publicly, horribly, harrowingly wrong, imagine how dull a couple who were both into the same books would be. You might just about put up with your friend's constant evangelising about Patricia Cornwell, but what if she turned up with a new beau who spouted the same hero-worship? And what if our couple were to take the plunge and move in together? Does any home really need two copies of everything on their bookshelf? Whose editions get sent to the charity shop?

The thin line between in and out-of-print

Earlier this week the LA Times printed a story about four Martin Luther King Jr. books which are slated to be brought back into print in time for the celebration of what would have been King's 80th birthday (Jan. 18th, 2010). 

[Beacon Press] will release new editions of "Stride Toward Freedom," first published in 1958, King's memoir of the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 and 1956; "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?," first published in 1967; "Trumpet of Conscience," first published in 1968; and "Strength to Love," first published in 1963, a volume of his most well-known homilies and the book in the civil rights leader's briefcase when he was killed on April 4, 1968.

This sort of thing happens all the time, books that have been all but forgotten are rejuvenated with a new print run allowing new generations to enjoy them.  Most of the time I hardly give this a second thought since it happens so often however this week I have been spending a lot of time looking at books on the verge of the in/out-of print boarder line.

I have been allocating all my spare time to research for the annual BookFinder.com Report - which lists the most sought after out-of-print books in the US, and more often than not these are the books that are right on this line.  Last year a number of books on our list were brought back into print due to the surge in popularity and I think we might see a few more this year.

When finished list is always interesting to read but for every book that makes it onto the list there are a number of books which just fail to meet our criteria because they are brought back from the out-of-print abyss just as interest in its out-of-print counterpart starts to increase.

One such book is the autobiography of moonshiner Popcorn Sutton titled Me and my Likker.  A local legend in Tennessee as a distiller he wrote the book in 1999 only to have it fall out-of-print for ten years until this past March when Bent Corner Books, a Knoxville bookstore, republished the work after Mr. Sutton's passing.  It is still amazingly hard to find, but it is back in print.

If I get the time I might try and compile a blog post with a few more of these near-misses but in the mean time I have to get back to the report.

[Now reading: Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre]

Bibliophibians

Something I've been meaning to share for a long time is this Wondermark comic about the role of books.

So, are you a bibliophibian?

Bloomsday and a Canadian book charity

Shauna one of my BookFinder.com colleagues found two neat posts on Boing Boing today and I wanted to share them with you.

First.  Today is Bloomsday, and if you download this Mp3 you can hear the one and only James Joyce reading from his own Ulysses.  If that link dosen't work try this mirror link

Second.  If you are living in Canada, more specificly Ontario, there is a Book Drive for Aboriginal Youth happening until the 21st of June which is collecting books to send to isolated communities in Canada's north.  Here is the description from the original post:

If you live in Ontario, or want to (quickly!) send some books to a good cause, the Lieutenant Governor of the province is doing his annual drive for new books for kids living in remote First Nations communities. These are generally small, isolated communities located deep in the northern boreal wilderness. Most have a population under 1000 and are accessible only by aircraft. Kids in these communities often have access to only old books in bad condition, so our province's Lieutenant Governor launched this annual effort several years ago to refresh community libraries with up-to-date titles.

The deadline, June 21, is only a few days away, unfortunately. If someone from outside Ontario REALLY wants to help out, feel free to get hold of me directly at dglad@sff.net and you can make arrangements to send a book or two to me, and I'll get it into the donation stream. But for those of you who live in Ontario, or nearby (I'm lookin' at you, folks in northern New York, Michigan, Minnesota, etc.!) this is a great chance to get some new reading material into the hands of kids who really, really need it.

Happy Bloomsday everyone!

Summer reading, don't believe the hype

I don't know if you notice to the swath of "summer reading" lists that are posted on every media platform known to man each year around this time?  I do, because its my job, and most of them suck.  The vast majority of the books on parade sound like a great way to ruin all the good weather and pleasant scenery that mother nature could muster on even the best summer afternoon.

Just because it's summer does not mean you have to read crap.  Reading this Esquire article, I am not alone in my views.  The columnist took one for the team and actually sat down to read Dean Koontz, Harlan Coben and David Baldacci - so we wouldn't have to.  Here is his take:

Stupid books take almost as long to read as not-so-stupid books. The chapters are short, the dialogue is "snappy," and still things go on forever. There's a reason only very special episodes of CSI stretch past the hour mark. These books are interminable — imagine a poorly produced thriller starring Tim Allen or Jim Belushi that lasts something like 12 to 15 hours.

This is the point where I'm supposed to find something positive to say about these books. That's how it works. You're supposed to get all counterintuitive and say that Sarah Palin is so freakishly stupid, she's actually some kind of genius. Here's what I can say: The Coben is not quite as bad as the Baldacci, which is not as god-awful as the Koontz.

It seems it's widely considered bad form to call stupid things stupid. But that's mostly what these books are. They'll cost you $25 a pop, waste a half day of your life, and leave you neither smarter nor happier, just kind of bored and a little depressed. That's no way to spend a summer. Screw these books. Take a walk.

I like a walk as much as the next guy but I also like reading in a hammock. So I want to ask, what is the best book you have read so far this summer?  Maybe we can collect some comments and post a list of books that you may actually WANT to read this summer.

New uses for card catalogs

I always wondered what happened to all the card catalogs once libraries went digital... I'm glad they are still being put to good use.

Here is a neat blog with photo's of card catalogs in peoples homes...

Have you ever had one of these days...

I just saw this on the Book Bench blog and it struck me funny, hope you enjoy it too.

Good afternoon. This is your pre-boarding announcement for Flight 505 to Milwaukee. All first-class and business-class passengers, passengers needing special assistance, and families travelling with small children may now board the aircraft.

We also invite any Platinum Club, ProTravel Select, Apogee Plus, and Sigma Alliance cardholders to board at this time.

Thank you for waiting. We now welcome members of Skyline Advantage, Priority Partners, Front Row Preferred, Exclusa, Summit V.I.P., Head of the Line, A-List Connections, Imperial Privilege, InCrOwD, Icarus Prime Choice, Top Rank Silk, and Top Rank Crystal Reserve. You may now board the aircraft.

We appreciate your patience. We now welcome members of Focus^One, Altius PremierPlan, Silver Platter, Jet Pack Invicta, Above and Beyond, Screaming Eagle, Canadians of Distinction, e-Go Trip, Express Wishes, Superba/FasTTraKK, Freedom Rider Élite, ¡Por Supuesto!, The Circle of Enchantment, Hegira, Hegira Mach Five, Wanderlu$t, Godhead Supreme, Godhead Burnt Offerings, Qomfort Qlub, MeFirst, MeFirst Deluxe Rewards, Out of My Way, and VelourPass. You may now board the aircraft.

The rest of you? Beat it.

Used books can green your reading

It is Earth Week this week, and while we should always be working on reducing our environmental impact one should take special consideration this week in particular. 

In grade school they started teaching us about environmentalism with the concept of the three R's: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.  (A campaign which made much more grammatical sense to my young mind than the previous three R's I was told to endorse: Reading, (W)riting, and (A)rithmatic).  The idea behind it being that first you reduce your consumption, then reuse items when you cannot reduce, and lastly when the item is no longer of use to you or anyone else you know, recycle it so that it may be turned into something of use once more.

All of us at BookFinder.com do a lot of reading and so we wanted to take a look at what kind of environmental impact our hobby and our industry have on the environment. I take a lot of joy from reading and out of all my activities that are potential harm to the earth it is one of the last that I will cut back on so I was happy to find that I was already doing a small part by mostly reading used books.

We found that the creation of every book produces 8.85lbs of carbon dioxide, and that shipping a book 2,123 miles (or 3,417 Km) by media mail only produces about 1.7lbs of C02 (ie: San Francisco to Chicago).  So even when shipping a used book across North America you are still producing less carbon than if you had bought a new book in your own town.

There are times when I have to buy a book new, sometimes I just can't wait to read a new authors work, or when I was in school I could not always find the textbooks I wanted used; but with used books being both better for the environment and easier on your pocketbook I think it is an easy decision to make.

So get into earth week and read a used book!

You can read our full report, search for used books, and learn to green your reading  with used books here