BilmBlog500

There just isn't much in my life so far that's leaving a hole in my existence the way the Borders bankruptcy is. Several years ago it would have been exciting on so many levels to see that Bouchercon is in Cleveland in 2012, and Albany in 2013. Never been to Cleveland, could have added at least a few Borders to my count, now I'm just looking at the date in early October and realizing I'd be going to Cleveland without even the chance of seeing a game at Jacobs Field, or whatever it is they're calling it these days. I need a new hobby, or something. And I can't see myself delighting in conquesting new art museums, or new Starbucks. I wish B&N were any kind of a substitute, but it's not. And B&N is just getting more boring, less interesting, to me with each passing day. I've never liked their basic Front of Store fixturing as much, I hate those damned octagons. And they're reducing orders, reducing title counts. Their strength against Bor...

So let's see what's happening this week in the world of e-books and retailing. Borders officially launched its e -book store today and has new low prices on the Sony Reader in their e-reader department , which is also charging forward and looking toward the opening of in-store AreaE sections in stores next month where people can play with the Sony, Kobo and Alutek devices, promises of more to come. Their goal, expressed in this news release , is to gain a 17% market share in e-books. And now here's an article from Publishers Weekly, reporting on a Barnes & Noble investor conference presentation. An article in the print edition of PW this week further elaborates, saying B&N claims a 20% share of the e-book market currently compared to a 17% share of print books, that they now sell 80% of their Nooks in retail stores vs. internet, and that currently print retail accounts for 90% of book sales but will drop to under 70% by 2014. Even though they see brick and mort...

So I'm just back from Toronto, where I was a guest agent at Bloody Words . Toronto is my kind of place. Urban. Walkable. Good mass transit. TImbits on every corner, chocolate glazed and cherry and original and apple fritter and duchie timbits and more timbits when you've finished those. Timbits, timbits, timbits! But I digress, for this post is supposed to talk about two of the best Toronto treats, known respectively as The World's Biggest Bookstore and Bakka Phoenix Books . The World's Biggest Bookstore is not actually the world's biggest by square footage, though it is very big, and when it first opened almost 30 years ago may even have been. Regardless, the name is I believe trademarked by the current owners, the Canadian bookstore chain Indigo . But the important thing to me is that for many many years it has clearly been the case that the World's Biggest Bookstore does indeed have the biggest selection of new books of any bookstore I've been i...