After my trip to the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival, I stopped off at a used bookstore called Housing Works in Manhattan. I was surprised at how sparse the selection was. The selection used to be quite good. I guess not as many people are donating books to charitable organizations.
I should not be surprised. They don't have a booksale at the library near my house. This is kind of surprising. You would think every library needs a book sale. But, I guess this is getting quaint and old. People are clearly not reading as many books so booksales don't do as well.
The booksale at our library even looks a little quaint to me. It doesn't seem to be selling a whole lot of books. Even our larger booksale didn't do so well with a room full of books. Very few booksellers came to buy books. According to my supervisor, the book dealers used to line up to buy books from our booksale. Maybe, people are selling their books on ebay instead. You never can be too sure about these things. When I went to the sale, I did not see much to buy. However, I did buy a brownie and a cup of coffee.
Right now, It is very hot where I am working. It is 92 degrees inside. The fans are blowing around the building while I am sitting here. I took some time to look through the New York Times Book Review for this week, but didn't find anything.
I put another book on hold, The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria. It is #7 on the Publishers Weekly Nonfiction Bestseller List. I think the book is focused on the rise of China and India. I'm not too sure yet. I also placed Shadowbridge by Gary Frost on hold.
Two more books came in for me to read, The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar. There is a surprise, Neil Gaiman wrote an introduction to the book which should be entertaining. The book is a trade paperback. The other book which came in is Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge.
When I get up to walk around the building I sweat a bit. I weeded some more law books this morning. My library aide, called in sick today. It is quite hot.
3 comments:
Our local book sales do very well. The local newspaper does one twice a year to raise funds for their newspapers in school program. The AAUW sale is annual and it to does very well. The first day of the sales is a mob scene, primarily resellers. They have become quite sofisticated with hand scanners for the isbn bar code. It may be an area thing but book sales are still a big thing here. Note the book swap icon on my blog. That is where my personal books are now going. Keep up the good writing.
Bill
I think it might have something to do with changes in media preference. We are starting to get a lot more people coming in to get videos and dvds. Our dvd and video collection is circulating more than our book collection.
We also have been expanding our Audiobooks and our MP3 Audiobooks which are quite popular. People seem to be really interested in listening to books more than reading them. This quite often true with the teenagers. MP3 Audios downloaded from computers are really popular with library patrons.
Also, a lot of our books have become a lot more visually oriented. There is the Teach Yourself Visually series for cumputers and musical instruments which people really like.
In addition, there has been a lot of interest in graphic novels and comic books. It seems like people want to have a more of a mixed media experience. Our book with CD test books are also doing well.
Also people have been asking for a variety of music CD's.
A lot more media than books. I think there is a change to a more visual society with less words.
I have just recently placed Fareed Zakaria's new book on hold at my library as well. I'm looking forward to reading your opinion on it.
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