So, I just got word from… someone… somewhere… that they just registered a book at AuthorsBookshop.com for a person that is close to them… as a Christmas present!
I’m not saying who did this, or where they are from, or in what way they are related to the recipient to protect the surprise.
But I just had [...]

Here’s another chapter in the saga of Vox Pop — our attempts to expand our bookstore/cafe/publishing empire. Enjoy! — Andy Laties

Chapter 4
When he released me from his embrace, Shelly Drobny reached into the air, strained upwards with his fingers, grasped something invisible, and shouted, “You’ve got the brass ring!”
The plan was a million dollars to [...]

Here’s something that showed up in my inbox that looks like a fun and important read:

COMING IN DECEMBERSelf-Defense for Radicals: A to Z Guide for Subversive StruggleBy Mickey ZRadicals, feminists, environmentalists. Activists for animal rights, human rights, civil rights. There are plenty of rebels and dissidents putting their asses on the line. Conversely, there’s [...]

Vox Pop, Sander, and Me — Chapter 2
Mid-sentence the photographer across the street entered my awareness. How long had he been standing there? Sunglasses, khaki jacket, muscular, bulky camera, snapping photos of me? Me and Holley, rather, chatting about our big plans.
The Vox Pop lease had been signed. It was September 2004 and [...]

The Sagging: Spirits & Skin. Poetry by Jason FiskPropaganda Press, 2009
The Sagging: Spirits & Skin sings eloquent tales of loss and the big truths that are learned within small pieces of emptiness. Through these poems, Fisk lurks like a quiet voyeur into the dirt-smeared windows of a embattled collection of naked and lonely souls. There [...]

Yesterday on the bookstore industry newsletter Shelf Awareness, this remarkable proposal was floated. (My personal response is appended further down in this blogpost.)
A Solution for Capital-Starved Independent BookstoresThe following is a proposal made by Jack McKeown, former president and CEO of the Perseus Books Group and former president and publisher of the Adult Trade Group [...]

Last night on the Indiebookman radio show, Brad mused about my perspective on eBooks. The answer is that I do not believe printed books are endangered, and I assume there will always be new developments in the distribution of information. I don’t regard eBooks as replacements for physical books, in other words: they will simply [...]

I’m working on a new book. Here’s the first chapter!
Vox Pop, Sander, and Me
Chapter One
By Andrew Laties
“Who will screw the chains? How will they screw the chains? When will they screw the chains?”
The entire email response to my book query for Screw The Chains: A Free-Jazz Improvising Radical Children’s Bookseller Gets Chewed Up And [...]

So, I didn’t even realize I was looking for the iPod of ebooks but after posts like this and this, I kinda have to come clean with myself and accept that I kinda am looking for that super slick ebook reader that is going to capture everyone’s heart and do to ebooks what the ipod [...]

In England, in prior centuries, there were no publishers. “Booksellers” produced books. Over the years, the role split. Booksellers who’d produced many titles ceased storefront operation, becoming “publishers.” Booksellers who’d concentrated on enlarging their storefront “stationer” businesses left the job of publishing to their former colleagues.
In his 1959 memoir, “An [...]