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This article explores the phenomenon of the gift enterprise bookstore in the mid-nineteenth-century United States. An early form of premium marketing, the gift-book enterprise promised to reward each book purchase with a surprise 'gift', ranging from pencils to dress patterns to cutlery to jewellery. A novel form of marketing books, the gift enterprise bookstore teetered on a thin line between sensation and sham. Although decried as form of illegal lottery gambling and beset by accusations of dishonesty, gift-book enterprises grew immensely popular. Drawing on extensive archival research on one of the most successful gift-book enterprises, the bookstores of G.G. and D.W. Evans--operating in urban centres from 1856-1861--this article examines gift enterprise bookselling in the context of mid-nineteenth-century American print cultures. As savvy entrepreneurs, the Evans' leveraged the national reach and perceived authority of the newspaper by engaging in debates over the morality and legality of the business in the columns of widely-circulating papers and capitalised on editorial and reprinting practices to endorse their business model and market their bookstores. In addition, in lengthy bookseller catalogues distributed across the nation, the Evans' created a bookstore in print and shaped inclusive imagined and real communities of readerbook buyers. Examining the print culture of Evans' gift-book enterprise offers new insights into nineteenth-century book marketing and the ways in which gift enterprise bookselling was intimately connected to and inseparable from contemporary print forms, networks, and practices. Taking the gift-book enterprise seriously expands the histories of American bookselling and decentres the dominant focus on large publishers. In addition, the gift-bookstore phenomenon highlights how bookselling is always entwined with larger cultural dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adapting to the digital age is a challenge for booksellers, resulting in paradoxical practices of providing digital books through brick-and-mortar stores, but also spurring innovations in the book trade. This article examines the digital operations of four Norwegian booksellers, looking specifically at how the combined forces of digitalization, internationalization and industry regulations affect their operations. Based on research interviews and business statistics, the paper finds that two of the selected booksellers represent an omnichannel business model, which includes seeking strategic benefits by combining digital and physical operations. The other two have a digital-only business model, offering digital content in novel ways, but struggling somewhat to gain the full advantage of their approach due to industry competition and regulatory hindrances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The difficulties associated with the creation of a large database of book prices include giving effective answers to questions such as how prices were formed during the various steps of the production process (sedimentation of production costs, costs related to the sale) or what the nature of the assigned value is (estimated in the case of used books, or of stock inventories, or the result of special conditions offered to specific customers, etc.). But first it is necessary to reflect on the interpretation given to the figures provided by the heterogeneous documentation which supports the creation of such a database. The many reference currencies in which these prices are expressed, depending on the monetary area of action of the economic operators (printers, booksellers, customers) are likely to confuse and mislead if their exact meaning is not clearly understood. This problem becomes even more urgent when, for example, the primary sources are the private notes of a collector who recorded how much he had paid for a book, or when two different currencies in place or in time have the same name. This aspect is also crucial in comparing different places and markets. Was the price expressed in money of account or in coined money? In domestic or foreign currency? Is it possible to relate two prices expressed in different currencies? The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore in greater depth some of the economic-monetary aspects of Renaissance Europe in order to help clarify any doubts or misreadings by building a reliable picture of the various types of currency used in Europe between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This is an essential step to subsequently address the possibility of comparing prices expressed in different currencies as they emerged on different markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the initiatives by the Associated Booksellers of Great Britain and Ireland between 1920 and 1930 to formalise training for booksellers, reflecting on the current moves to reinstate some kind of bookselling qualification through the partnership of Waterstones with the University of Derby. It uses as primary sources the trade papers of The Publishers' Circular and Booksellers' Record and The Bookseller, both key narrative repositories for histories of this nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Itinerant booksellers play very significant but less noticeable role in the book trade in Ghana and many developing economies. They are the mobile booksellers who carry their collections to the doorsteps of their consumers. This paper highlights the contributions of itinerant booksellers to book distribution in Ghana. The paper makes a case for and against itinerant bookselling in Ghana. First, the paper raises issues with the quality and content of some of the reading materials peddled by the itinerant booksellers and discusses their implications for copyright and book development. The paper then argues that in spite of their shortcomings, itinerant booksellers have the potential to assist in finding a lasting solution to the book distribution problems of the country, and, need to be encouraged and assisted by book industry players such as the Ghana Development Council, Ghana Book Publishers Association, and the Ghana Booksellers Association to contribute meaningfully to Ghana's book business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Book as a medium of expression has experienced change from the days of Gutenberg, but never has it been so influenced by the new technologies which have spared no other sector. The general infrastructural development in Nigeria in relation to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is bedeviled by issues ranging from Government's ineptitude to handling the energy sector and consequent costs of running businesses in Nigeria. Coupled with these, are high government taxes, high cost of equipments and obvious absence of general maintenance culture. Greatly affected are the services of writers, publishers, booksellers and libraries. The problems are not insurmountable, while governments are called upon to play their roles, the paper laid more emphasis on what key players in the industry should know and do in order to keep afloat in the future. The paper examines some of the recent technological developments as it relates to the industry. Of importance is the pace by which bandwidths are getting bigger and cheaper; Smartphones are becoming common place; and Social Media is becoming very popular and accessible by more elites. Again, individuals are becoming more and more equipped with free tools to self-publish. Recommendations are laid out in the paper on what must be done to remain relevant in this season of ICT revolution. The impact is already felt in developed countries. While in Nigeria, key players in the industry must learn to embrace ICT in developing the book industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with four cultural and historical features of book industry that still determine the nature of book business. The paper concentrates on how these features impact book industries in linguistic communities with a relatively small number of speakers. The paper also examines the reasons for absence of the publishing education and contemporary publishing research in the world of academia. In its final part, the paper shows the reason why, at least for the time being, e-books will not outperform printed books and stresses that current developments have triggered not only new research on contemporary books, but also created a set of threats and opportunities for book business in small language communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes best-seller lists in seven major European book markets between April 2008 and March 2009. The paper's authors introduce the concept of an impact factor for best-selling authors that shows how influential an author is in a given market and across the analyzed markets overall. The paper's authors discovered that a new generation of European best-selling authors appeared in major book markets of Europe such that those not writing in English have an impact of almost twice that of the English writers. Furthermore, the authors have discovered that only veteran English or American best-selling authors tend to be published by big media conglomerates; the majority of the European best-selling authors were published by a surprising mix of big and small, independent and international publishing houses. It is striking that English as the most popular second language in the world did not play a stronger role as an intermediary language in the transmission of books from one European culture to another, as European publishers in major markets still employ editors who read a variety of languages and thus play the role of intermediaries in how books travel from one culture to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In fall 2003, the Smathers Library Bookstore instituted a one-year pilot project selling surplus gift books online. This paper describes how the bookstore staff researched, prepared, and embarked on online book selling. It illustrates how the bookstore staff selected the online book selling agent, Alibris, as the Web site utilized for their online selling, and provides details in the methodology of listing books for sale in the used book market. The paper presents the responses to questions asked of staff at two other libraries selling books online, and concludes with a summary of the online sales project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the issue of the understanding of the book-selling situation as Swedish booksellers see it. It pursues the answers to the following questions: 1. What are the perceptions of Swedish booksellers of the impact of e-books on their business? 2. What drivers are important for Swedish booksellers for adopting and developing e-book sales through their own sales channels? 3. What do they perceive as barriers to e-book selling through their own channels? The authors have employed the analysis of the secondary statistical data and a survey of Swedish booksellers to answer their questions. The results of the investigation have shown that the Swedish booksellers do not feel their bookshops, or business in general, are threatened by e-books. The opinions on e-books do not differ between the few selling e-books and others who do not offer this product. The reasons for selling e-books are well-functioning routines and personal interest in the product. The reasons for not selling the books are the lack of demand and technical resources as well as contractual agreements with e-book publishers or vendors. So, technical resources for e-booksales, routines, and contracts with publishers are the main premises for this activity. The biggest barriers to e-booksales are: a) the price as one can see not only in the answers of the booksellers, but also in the drop of sales obviously related to the rise of prices during 2014; b) lack of demand from customers who do not enquire about e-books in bookshops. This leads to the belief that e-books will be sold mostly online either directly from publishers and authors or through online booksellers. However, an equal number of booksellers believe that physical bookshops will be selling printed books and e-books in the future. The future of e-books seems to be quite secure and non-threatening to printed books from the point of view of booksellers. The growth of e-book sales is quite slow and the respondents believe that it will increase at a moderate rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The normative practice of using pages to copyedit or correct manuscripts is an inefficient and outdated mode of working. It causes duplication of work and severely limits the ability to pursue agile publishing strategies (e.g., XML-first). It is important to finalize a manuscript prior to pages. In addition to making the process more efficient and addressing a process in which print may not exist, the act of working without the paper metaphor might give us the ability to better understand how publications function in a dynamic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article handles general developments and changes in book trade and book publishing which took place in Estonia during the second half of the 19th and in the early 20th century. The aim is to show the formation of bookshops trading with Estonian books, to analyse the activities of Estonian booksellers as publishers and their role in publishing books in the Estonian language. The paper is based on the retrospective national bibliography of Estonian books that were published from 1850 to 1917, on research literature and on the data collected by the author for her doctoral thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bestsellers are an important commercial and social phenomenon. The paper defines and analyses bestsellers in the UK between 1998 and 2005, following on earlier work by one of the authors. It is concluded that there is a core groups of genres and authors dominating the bestseller lists, although there are also unexpected successes, especially at Christmas time. There is some evidence of long-term changes in taste, including the apparent decline in the popularity of romantic fiction and the growth of fantasy literature. It is also shown that media and movie adaptations and spin-offs are now an integral part of this dimension of the book industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the metrics of publishers for making business decisions. The major decisions which publishers need to make are: (1) Whether or not to commit to publishing a book in the first place, (2) Where to set the retail price and (3) How many copies to print. It suggests changing internal scorecards so that they reflect the true economics of book publishing. Unit costs include paper, presswork and binding. Overhead cost is pretty much fixed. The retail price should cover the actual direct costs of manufacturing, selling and shipping the book.

Nelson Ball (1942– ), in addition to being an important Canadian poet, small press publisher, and bookseller, was an editor of little magazines in the 1960s. He co-founded and edited Volume 63 (1963–1967) and individually founded and edited Weed (1966–1967) and Hyphid (1968). This index provides full bibliographic data for each magazine (including dates, locations, and editors) and full listings of contributors and works (including information original to the magazines that identified from where a given contributor was writing). It also indexes advertisements for books, presses, magazines, and bookstores that appeared in the magazines to make possible the mapping of international small press distribution networks as they have been constructed through little magazines. This index includes an introduction that provides historical context for Ball’s small press practice and is intended to supplement existing bibliographies of Ball’s activities to continue building a literary, book-historical, and bibliographic record of his works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]