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When we asked Steve Sherman to drive the coast of California, shooting surfers in each county, in their favorite habitats, he immediately jumped at the opportunity to go hang with [...]

The success of community banking institutions in the 21st century will come from improved performances in sales and marketing. As management guru Peter Drucker puts it, businesses should constantly grow better and banking is no exception to this maxim. For banks to serve their customers better, they should focus on four crucial areas. These are identifying their customers, what their customers value, their specific needs and also, identifying buying patterns of potential customers., What's the trick to successfully selling financial products and services? Learn to leap through hoops for your best customers. Or, at least, those hoops most important to them. In this, [...]

In the past 15 years it's safe to say that we've all been amazed by the growth in television programming available to children. Cable, VCRs, and video-games have spread rapidly [...]

I first became interested in photography on my honeymoon--a borrowed camera, an exciting Bermuda seascape and hundreds of slides later, a passion for photography was born. Fortunately, I married a […]

Feeding cookbook buyers with seasonal delights counts as a happy but major publishing challenge--happy because cookbooks in turn feed a hungry bottom line, and major because publisher competition, buyer expectations [...]

As returns continue to be a problem in certain segments of the book business, deep discounting in exchange for nonreturnability has made incremental steps toward greater acceptance. At least one [...]

Is the Golden Egg of Harvard Square Ready to Crack? David Barillari describes his two-level, general interest store--Barillari Books in Cambridge, Mass.--as 'not only the new kid on the block [...]

Publishers are demanding creative proposals, proven track records COMPETITION FOR author readings has intensified across the country in recent years as chains have joined in the increasing demand for writer [...]

Newsletters increase sales, enhance store image, convey changes in policy, build customer attendance for author signings--and cost a lot. Despite the expense, they play a core role in marketing programs [...]

BATTLING THE RECESSION The recession has hit New England first, fast and furiously. Business is on yellow light, with real estate plummeting, unemployment climbing, commercial rentals falling, and the red [...]

The death of President Hafez al-Asad in June 2000 was a watershed in modern Middle Eastern history. The region's second longest-serving head of state (only Libya's Qadhafi has been in [...]

ALGIERS is a thriving port: anyone looking down from the hills on the attractive sweep of its bay might find it hard to conceive of this as a `dangerous place'. [...]

LIBYA is an enigma. Based theoretically on the principle of popular control over all aspects of political life, its system of government looks little different from most of the Arab [...]

By any criterion, Oman is a remarkable country. Separated by the Gulf of Oman and Straits of Hormuz from Iran and by the Arabian Sea from the Indian subcontinent, its [...]

'VOLATILE' is the epithet most commonly used to describe the Middle East. But the year 2002 leaves observers in search of new adjectives to apply. The period has seen a [...]

An analog divider circuit seems to promise something for nothing. Just divide any number by zero and the result is infinity. But in theory, if numbers approaching xero are in […]

A sense of high energy animated the 24th Annual New England Booksellers Association Trade Show October 3-5 at the World Trade Center in Boston. where 3344 total attendees crowded the [...]

NEBA seminar stresses newsletter and Web site design, co-op money as competitive tools THE NEW ENGLAND Booksellers Association's spring seminar--'Getting the Word Out About Your Store'--served as a warning: in [...]

FOUR YEARS AGO, Tilbury House published the picture book Talking Walls as a trade title, but, publisher Jennifer Elliott said, 'It quickly caught the attention of teachers, who saw how [...]

ONE MAJOR THEME at the 23rd annual New England Booksellers Association trade show in Boston, September 27-29, was the effect of limited discretionary time on consumers. Keynote speaker Wendy Strothman, [...]

THE AUTOMATIC signature pen has long been used in government offices, but a new application for it has recently emerged in the book world. Before Hillary Rodham Clinton's tour for [...]

When booksellers find out what makes customers unhappy, they can provide better customer service, Faith Popcorn says INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS can parlay consumers' concerns about the future into profit, futurist Faith [...]

IN A HIGHLY CHARGED, sometimes humorous presentation, Tom Peters challenged the 147 attendees at the New England Booksellers Association, most of whom were independent booksellers, to experiment and find their [...]