Yesterday’s New York Times has an article on Amazon.com’s tenth anniversary. Sometime in the last ten years the press started covering Amazon as a business instead of as a novelty.
Last Sunday happened to be the fifth anniversary of my last day at Amazon, by the way.
Over at The Book Standard, writer Adam Langer tours the Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania plant where his novel is being printed:
There are machines with gigantic robotic arms, huge vats, or “totes,” of ink and glue, the latter of which comes in little yellow pearls called “hot melt adhesive.” Fifty-foot-high rolls of paper are stacked to the ceiling of the factory’s paper warehouse, which, on the day that I visit, contains 14,211 rolls of paper; they weigh in at approximately 12,228,270 pounds.
There are two big book sales in the Puget Sound area this weekend.
First up, the Tacoma Public Library’s Monster Book Sale. They’re filling a high school cafeteria with 40,000 items, most priced between 50 cents and $1. It runs from 9-5 on Saturday, July 16 and Sunday, July 17. Entry to the Friday evening preview sale costs $25. The details are on the library’s news page.
In Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood, Half Price Books is having a tent sale, Saturday and Sunday 9-6. Everything is $1 or less. I’m not sure what sort of books they’re selling here — old store inventory, fresh inventory, remainders, or a mix. The address and other details are at the Half Price Books news page.
In this article, The New York Times mines two studies that conclude the used book market strengthens new book sales:
When used books are substituted for new ones, the seller faces competition from the secondhand market, reducing the price it can set for new books. But there’s another effect: the presence of a market for used books makes consumers more willing to buy new books, because they can easily dispose of them later.
(via The Millions)