Thursday, July 31, 2008

Amazon Eats Abe.


The Big news this morning is the letter from the Abe CEO announcing the gobbling up of ABE Books by Amazon.

Here's the letter in full.

Dear Booksellers,

AbeBooks has reached an agreement to be acquired by Amazon.com, Inc. This is a major landmark in the 12-year history of AbeBooks.

AbeBooks will continue to operate as a stand-alone business with all aspects of AbeBooks' bookseller and customer experience remaining intact. AbeBooks' headquarters will remain in Victoria, BC, Canada, and our European offices will remain in Dusseldorf, Germany. We will continue to support both our international marketplaces and our domestic marketplace here in Canada. I will continue to lead AbeBooks.

We expect this change to allow AbeBooks to expand its offerings and introduce new features and services to enhance the book buying and selling experience. Amazon is committed to further developing the AbeBooks brand and building upon the success of the past 12 years. This is not the first time AbeBooks has changed hands since being launched in 1996. Hubert Burda Media, a German media company, took a majority shareholding in 2003.

The bookselling community has been a vital component in our success, and we are grateful for your continuing support. We will be happy to answer questions about our new ownership and what the future holds. A bookseller Roundtable will be held on Thursday August 7th at 2:30pm PDT/9:30pm GMT/7:30am AU where I and the Director of Sales & Account Management, Shaun Jamieson, will answer any questions you might have. In addition, the 'Ask AbeBooks a question' folder will continue to be available for ongoing questions from the seller community.

We realize this is important news for our community, and we are confident that this acquisition will greatly benefit AbeBooks' sellers and provide us with many opportunities for future growth.

For more details please see the official release posted today.

Regards,

Dr. Hannes Blum President and CEO AbeBooks
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In other News, yesterday we traveled the back roads of Wisconsin to the Magical world of ....Nowhere.
Our destination was Castle Arkdale, Markesan, Wisconsin.

We first heard of this place earlier this year when a Wisconsin State Journal Article featured their 'castle', which is a lovely manure tank converted masterfully into their flagship building full of books, of which there are over 10. Buildings that is.

The other day, while reading the book seller blogs, i noticed a Wisconsin blog, with a video about the great bookstore in the middle of nowhere.
A video you must watch.

Our report of our magical day will be coming soon.....


In other book news....

Bookchase has a review of the New WILLIE NELSON NOVEL.
Book Chase: A Tale out of Luck

There's a Great start-up story out of Virginia at
the Bookstore Blog. - A Recipe For Starting A Used Bookstore

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Back from the flood.

Well, it's been a LONG TIME since i've blogged here, and so much has happened, that to tell the backstory at this point would take a trilogy. Suffice it to say that we have survived and recovered from the nasty Record-Breaking Flood. The Pos office has moved back in after a major face-fift to their abode. We even built a new concrete handicap ramp for the older folks who use the post office.
Our building is on the left at center.

We lost about 3000 books during the flood. hese were books wihin 1ft of the floor that we had to leave when the fire dept evacuated us by boat about 9pm. All in all the destruction transformed to creation, and we are back where we started.



A kind professor from a local university has gifted us with a few hundred tomes from his old office. So many writing and rhetoric books. And they have been selling well. School time again.....

So I wil make every effort to start up the blogging again, and keep the booklore rolling. I just bought a new camera, my first digital one ever, believe it or not, so the blog should brighten up with images soon.

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