5 Book Blogs You Should Be Reading
By Nico on Tuesday the 9th of March, 2010 at 4:14 pm
There are hundreds of literary blogs out there and I subscribe to several dozen of them, but recently I’ve pared down my RSS subscriptions again, and thought I’d share five of my favourites.
So I present to you, in no particular order:
1. Bookninja
George Murray posts several times a day, commenting on the latest in book news, reviews and miscellanea with snappy asides and acidic author bias. It’s lovely.
A few recent posts: “The literary Devil don’t want Toronto’s soul“, “Amazon and Apple bringing ebooks bar fight to Canada?“, “Sargent rallies the troops“.
Bonus: Free snark! (Read more…)
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Category: Books & Literature
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Seven reasons booksellers hate their customers
By Nico on Thursday the 25th of June, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Matt Blind has written a disturbingly accurate light and humourous piece on the different types of customers who visit bookstores.
Grazers
Grazers don’t need a book, or want a book, but they love coming in to the bookstore, and love lingering leisurely over all the tables, racks, endcaps, promotional displays, and front-of-store placements. If they can do this while a bookseller is attempting to replenish or reset the display, all the better.
The only redeeming feature of a grazer is that they can only accomplish their task with a cup of coffee in their hand — pardon, with a $4 half-soy-half-decaf-latte-with-a-shot-of-pretention — and while they clog the main aisle and generally pose a hazard to navigation, they are mostly harmless. They might try to casually engage you conversation, “How’s Business?”, but they don’t really care. Their primary goal is being in a bookstore for an hour each week so they can insert an off-hand, “oh I saw that the other day at Big Box Books” in later conversations, proving to their friends that they are topical and literate.
Bonus: They buy coffee. Margins on coffee are excellent.
My store didn’t sell coffee (apparently we were missing out on a huge opportunity here) but it certainly reads familiar. (Read more…)
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Category: Books & Literature
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