Category Archives: bookselling

On Shakespeare’s Annotated Dictionary, links and news.

(8 May 2014: I’ve let this slide since the initial flurry of stories. My one update is something of a meta-update: Wechsler and Koppelman have their own page of links to press stories and interviews here. There’s at least one … Continue reading

Posted in booksellers, bookselling | Leave a comment

Obscure Objects Explained.

Below you will find the description of this cheese grater, which was sold out of my recent illustrated online-only catalog, Occasional List 12. Bear with me. 12. [Obscure Object]. Stainless steel Inox-brand cheese grater rescued from the recycling cart of … Continue reading

Posted in bookselling, catalogues, ephemera, high-spots | Leave a comment

Would you buy a used book from this man?

Photo by Myra Klarman.

Posted in bookselling | Leave a comment

Publish and perish; or, the hazards of a certain peculiar strain of the children’s book trade.

Much has been made of late about the fact that the Internet is killing off the traditional publishing business (and of course its hapless trade cousin, the book store). I would suggest that the publication and peddling of books has … Continue reading

Posted in bookselling, miscellanea | Leave a comment

The anatomy of a melancholy trade.

Friend and colleague Lorne Bair has just published an essay on becoming and on being an antiquarian bookseller, with some apt bourbon-fueled ruminations on why we enter the trade: In the end, everyone I know who does this job well … Continue reading

Posted in booksellers, bookselling | Leave a comment

I despair of providing an appropriately dreadful pun in the headline.

Somewhat souped-up print on demand has come to the University of Michigan library system. This has of course been in the works for a while, and I am not remotely qualified for (nor inclined toward) prognostication, so I will withhold … Continue reading

Posted in bookselling, libraries | 1 Comment

The seasonal emergence of the elusive bookseller.

Just a heads up that I will have a couple of tables at the Ann Arbor Antiquarian Book Fair on May 18. The book fair has been timed to coincide with the Ann Arbor Book Festival. All of which should … Continue reading

Posted in bookselling | Leave a comment

Talking to the invisible hand.

Louis Sullivan, Mending fences where relevant, While asking around for extreme unction, Said “Forget I said ‘Form follows function.’” I’m fairly certain somebody once noted that a clerihew is the last refuge of a scoundrel, but this is a clerihew … Continue reading

Posted in bookselling | 2 Comments

Some preliminary notes on the aesthetic merits of interesting catalogues.

I am willing to break my silence when I receive several immensely pleasing bookseller’s catalogues in my post office box in one fell swoop, as I did this morning. Stuart Bennett’s fiftieth catalogue, Unique? A Catalogue of Apparently Unrecorded or … Continue reading

Posted in bookselling, catalogues | 3 Comments

As the Mighty Wulritzer descends into the pit to the strains of Bronislaw Kaper: An update.

I will be leaving town (D.V.) this Friday for the San Francisco Bay Area to scout the Larsen book fair and check in with various friends and colleagues. Between two days at the fair and three subsequent days of scouting, … Continue reading

Posted in bookselling | 1 Comment