Archive for the ‘CKYbooks’ Category
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
Several months ago when we started this blog and the Twitter account, we tossed around the idea of hosting an online book club. I’ve never participated in a book club but couldn’t tell you exactly why. I would love to so the idea of helping host one was – is - rather appealing.
I have this vague idea to regularly post a brief overview of chapter(s) we’re reading and have participants chime in either with a comment or a post on their own blog. It would be a great opportunity to get other viewpoints on a book while meeting new people (and possibly building some blog traffic if you’re into that)
So here are a few questions:
1. Would this be something that would interest you?
2. Would you want to do a chapter a week? More? Less? Depends on the book?
3. Do you want to jump in with a new(er) release or go old school?
You can respond here, or email me, or hit me up on Twitter or Facebook. This could be a lot of fun!
*Yes, yes…I DID just make an Ice Cube reference. Please don’t hold it against me.
Monday, June 28th, 2010
Here’s the weekly comparison of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times Top 5 bestsellers in Fiction Hardback.
| Wall Street Journal Top 5 |
New York Times Top 5 |
| The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner Stephenie Meyer |
The Overton Widow Glenn Beck* |
| The Overton Widow Glenn Beck* |
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest Steig Larsson |
| The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest Steig Larsson |
The Lion Nelson DeMille |
| The Lion Nelson DeMille |
The Passage Justin Cronin |
| Whiplash Catherine Coulter* |
Whiplash Catherine Coulter* |
*New this week
Monday, June 28th, 2010
Hardback fiction new releases:
06/29/2010
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (David Mitchell)
Deadline (Stella Rimington)
Tutankhamun: The Book of Shadows (Nick Drake)
Foreign Influence (Brad Thor)
Work Song (Ivan Doig)
A Vintage Affair (Isabel Wolff)*
Kraken (China Mieville)*
In the Name of Honor (Richard North Patterson)
Running Dark (Jamie Freveletti)
Keys to the Repository (Blue Bloods Series) (Melissa de la Cruz)
Inside Out: A Novel (Barry Eisler)
Nights of Villjamur (Mark Charan Newton)*
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (Lola Shoneyin)
The Whisper (Carla Neggers)
Ice Cold (Jane Rizzoli & Maura Isles Series #8) (Tess Gerritsen)
Five Days Apart (Chris Binchy)*
The Exile (Andrew Britton)
The Grave Gourmet (Alexander Campion)
Shoulder Bags and Shootings (Dorothy Howell)
June 30, 2010
A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril? An Alternate History (Peter G. Tsouras)
Forbidden Fruit (Corinna Chapman Series #5) (Kerry Greenwood)
July 1, 2010
The Sleeping Beauty (Five Hundred Kingdoms Series #5) (Mercedes Lackey)
On the Nickel (John Shannon)
Still Waters (Marilyn Todd)
Life, After (Sarah Todd)*
Witchcraft (Jayne Ann Krentz)
The Magician’s Accomplice: A Commander Jana Matinova Investigation (Michael Genelin)
Danger Close (William G. Boykin)
The Eye of the Virgin (Frederick Ramsey)
A Pig of Cold Poison: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery (Pat McIntosh)
The Price of Liberty (Kier Graff)
Koko (Peter Straub)
Resolutions (Jane A Adams)
Dying to Know: A Lance Elliott Mystery (Keith McCarthy)
The Mills of God: A Reverend Nick Lawrence Mystery (Deryn Lake)
Late Rain (Lynn Kostoff)
In Concert (Steve Rasnic Tem/Melanie Tem/Howie Michels)
The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (William Nicholson)
Caged (Hilary Norman)
July 5, 2010
Death is Not an Option: Stories (Suzanne Rivecca)*
* Added to my TBR list
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
I correspond with quite a few of you, not only here but also on Twitter and Facebook. Many of you are avid readers and have to purge your home every now & then before you lose a small child among the books you’ve acquired. However, I ALSO know that there are many of you out there visit us because you want to make some extra dough. Todd has compiled a list of suggestions for where to find used books that could turn you a pretty profit. You avid readers – feel free to read on. You might find it’s not so hard to fund your Amazon habit after all!
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1) FRIENDS OF LIBRARY SALES
Go to the Friends of Library sales in your area. Contact the main library in your town and ask them if they have a book sale periodically. If it’s a decent size library, it may have 2 or 3 sales per year. Normally you pay $15 or so a year to join the FOL. That enables you to get into the sale ahead of the public. And no, ‘The Friends of the Library’ is not a group of Quakers.
2) ESTATE SALES
Watch the newspaper for estate sales. Though some people try to disguise garage sales by calling them estate sales, an estate sale is one in which there is an ‘estate’ left by someone who has died and the people conducting the estate sale are trying to sell ALL the belongings of the recently deceased person in order to ‘settle’ the estate (divide up the money from the proceeds of the sale to the different family members that remain and have a legal right to the estate). I recently bought 29 books for $23 on the last day of a 3-day estate ‘sale’. I’ve already sold 9 of those books for over $150. But perhaps more importantly, through this sale, I made contact with someone that does estate sales on a regular basis and they said they would let me have an early look at the used books of an upcoming sale they are going to have.
3) AUCTIONS
Auctions are different than Estate sales but sometimes estates are settled by having an ‘Estate Auction’ rather than an ‘Estate Sale’. At Estate Sales, items are normally priced and you either pay the price that is marked or you don’t buy it. At an Estate Auction, or any auction, items are not pre-priced but they are sold to the highest bidder. There are other kinds of auctions as well. Sometimes a business goes out of business and a bank or a court of law that now owns the property of the business or is acting on behalf of unpaid creditors has an auction to try to recoup some of the money the business owed. Sometimes a business owner retires or just had excess ‘stuff’ they want to sell. I attended an estate ‘Auction’ about 6 weeks ago and would up buying 200-300 books for $200. A higher price than I wanted to pay, especially since around 75% of the books were worthless (I don’t sell penny books). That’s the way it goes sometimes at an auction. But of the remaining 25% I got my money’s worth and then some.
4) THRIFT STORES
Some, if not many, booksellers utilize this source but I haven’t had much success with it. Thrift stores are stores that typically resell donated items. It may be a small locally owned or operated thrift store or it could be a larger chain like Goodwill. Look in the yellow pages under ‘Thrift Stores’. There is one store in my vicinity that sells things at 25% off one day a week. And my local Goodwill headquarters has an auction every week. I have bought only a handful of books from thrift stores. I’m beginning to think my time is better spent with other sources I have developed.
5) YARD SALES
I haven’t had much success with finding books at yard sales – it’s a lot of leg work (and gas money). Now if you happen to be out anyway on the weekend and see one and have the time, go ahead and stop. In my town, the newspaper has free ads you can use and there are many yard sales announced there each week. Sometimes people will include ‘books’ in the description of what they are selling, but beware, it could be a load of firewood (Nora Roberts novels, Readers Digest books, Time Life, National Geographic, old textbooks or encyclopedia sets). However, I was out one Saturday and picked up 5 books at a sale for $1 each that I would up selling for $15 – $20 each. Another time I was driving around looking for yard sales when I came across a bunch of boxes someone had thrown out – it looked like someone had moved. In the boxes were quite a few books, one that’s on the river for $75. I haven’t sold it yet but I have sold some of the other ones.
6) PUT AN AD IN THE PAPER
As mentioned earlier, our town newspaper allows you to place free ads. So I tried putting an ad in the paper that said I wanted non-fiction books, small or large lots. I didn’t say I wanted to ‘buy’ books; I just said I ‘wanted’ books. I made that distinction in hopes someone would just want to get rid of some books at no cost. But I knew that most would want you to pay for them as you would expect. This generated a lot of calls but not many good results. But if you have a bit of time on your hands you may try this. If you do, be very prepared to answer some specific questions and you also need to ask some specific questions. You need to decide ahead of time how much you will tell people you will pay for their books. You need to make this clear before you spend your time driving across town (or out of town) to look at some books and you need to make sure this price is clear and acceptable to the other person. I had one person tell me he would ‘make it worth my while’ to come look at his 40 or 50 books. I was accustomed to telling people I would give .50 to $1 apiece and in some cases as high as $2 a book. When I came and looked at this person’s books and told him how much I normally give, he backed out and said he wasn’t interested. Fortunately I didn’t drive far to look at these. But I learned something else too – I learned that some hunting books are worth some money. This person kind of clammed up after I offered a dollar a book so I don’t really know what he meant when he told me he would ‘make it worth my while’. People will also ask you what kind of books you are looking for. I would always make it clear that I wanted non-fiction only. It’s funny how people read your ad saying you want non-fiction books and they are calling because they have boxes and boxes of romance books they want to sell you. I always made it clear I didn’t want Readers Digest, Time Life, or National Geographic published books. I explained the reason – I am buying books for resale and the book has to be worth a few dollars in order for me to spend my time marketing and selling it. And the publishers mentioned earlier typically print large quantities of their books so there are a lot of them out there (big supply) and there is not enough demand for them. That’s why I don’t buy fiction either. There are exceptions of course but it is a general rule of thumb. If someone calls you and say they have ‘a thousand’ books for sale (like someone did me that lived 50 miles away), you should probably ask, since it is such a large quantity, have they been stored inside or outside. In my case, these books were in a storage shed and some had water damage. About half were Reader’s Digest (even though I said I couldn’t use them) and about 200 were fiction. Of the 300 left, there were maybe 50 -100 books worth taking and of those I got rid of about half or more. Fortunately I only gave $20 for them (plus $25 worth of gas and 2 ½ hours of time).
I did buy some books from one guy this way that I have already got my money back plus some but I finally stopped using this method of getting books – it was just too time consuming. However, it may work if you don’t mind taking all the calls and being very selective about which books you would go look at in hopes of getting that one call that would be a goldmine. I never got that call.
7) BIG CHAIN BOOKSTORES CLEARANCE SHELVES
Some booksellers find books they can use at their local big chain bookstore. Though I have visited these stores a few times I had never found anything I could use there – until recently. I just happened to stop by one of these chain stores and found some books seriously reduced. I picked up a few bargains but it has only happened one time for me.
REMAINDERS
These are typically books from publishers where they printed more copies than they have sold (or can sell through their normal channels). So they sell them at seriously discounted prices. Normally you see these books at mark down tables of bookstores and they have a black magic marker mark on one or two edges called a remainder mark. To be profitable at all, you need to buy these from a publisher or a remainder book dealer – not from your local big chain bookstore. This is not a channel I have used to get books. I understand it is pretty competitive and you have to generally buy large quantities. From what I have seen, by the time the book has reached this stage, it is already selling on Amazon for pennies on the dollar.
9) CLASSIFIED ADS
This is different than what I mentioned earlier where I placed an ad in the paper saying I wanted books. This is where people advertise that they have books for sale. I want to address two sources of classified ads – local newspaper and CraigsList.com. Sometimes people will advertise books for sale in the newspaper (under ‘Articles for Sale’ in my paper). I haven’t seen it yet but people do use Craig’s List to sell all sorts of things so you may check that source in your locale.
10) EBAY
Some people use this but the competition is stiff and it is like looking for a needle in a haystack – it’s time consuming. There are also Bulk lots of books sometimes on the bay.
11) LOCAL LIBRARY
This is different than Friends of the Library sale mentioned earlier. Some local library branches will sell used books for around a dollar. These are typically books they have too many duplicates of or books donated to them that they can’t use. Call your local branch about this.
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
Have you ever had one of those days when everything you sat down to compose, whether a blog post or business correspondence, was total and utter crap? When you wanted to wad up the piece of paper and in a fit of passionate disgust hurl it at the trash can across the room? (Somehow hitting the delete key isn’t quite as satisfactory.) I am in the process of trying to capture my impressions of Spar by Kij Johnson. It’s an…interesting…read and not very long. I need to re-read it again when not in throes of an allergy attack. Or maybe I should try reading it right after taking allergy meds. Hmm…
Anyway. That’s what I had planned for today and yet every draft has ended up in that proverbial trash can on the screen. So instead, let’s talk about something very near and dear to my heart right now – our personal libraries & reading areas. Most of my library is still packed up in boxes awaiting the purchase of new bookcases. However I now have my own personal reading space. Our new bedroom has a sitting area lower from the main room, complete with a built in bookshelf. I unpacked some books before we were fully moved in and my husband graciously agreed to put the recliner down there. The wall is lined with windows overlooking our backyard. All I need now is time to take advantage of my little personal space! It’s nothing like Neil Gaiman’s reading area* but I’m content starting small.
How about you? Do you have dedicated spot for your library and reading? What would your dream personal library look like? (Mine would include a big comfy chair, floor to ceiling shelves, one wall of windows, and maybe a hidden room)
In the meantime, if you don’t have the space of a multi best seller author, CKY Books can help with any books you need to cull.
*Click on the picture to go to the full story, including close up shots.
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
My father loves tomatoes. He grows them in several spots in his backyard, using special soil and a bunch of other stuff I don’t even pretend to comprehend. He prunes them back and ties the vines to special fencing and makes sure they get enough sunlight and water. I have even found him late in the evenings sitting in the middle of his tomato empire with salt shaker in hand and bucket of water humming a happy little tune with tomato juice running down his chin. It is pretty normal really, and the neighbors know not to worry. I’m sure one day that is where the nice young men in white coats will find him.
Of course with such a large supply of tomatoes he enjoys giving them to his neighbors by the carload, the mailman, the meter reader and any strangers who just happen to drive by slowly enough for him to get to their car window. He dearly loves to share his tomatoes – except, apparently, with squirrels.
Now I have nothing against squirrels, heck I think they are kinda cute. But apparently my father had a bad experience with a squirrel as a young man and is just not able to let it go. It possibly could have been the fact that the squirrels weren’t invited. They just showed up and began to help themselves. Regardless of the reason for their arrival, he determined they were not welcome. So he began a long, long line of squirrel deterrents. Each idea he tried was a little more over the top than the last. At first it was simply covering the plants with bags, which lasted about a day as the squirrels just crawled, under. Next was specially made mesh cages. Did you know that squirrels are really strong for their size? Yeah, If I ever go to jail I want a squirrel with me to bend the bars, or at least drive the jailer insane.
Next came, barbed wire, electrified barbwire, EMF pulses, high decibel frequency modulation output, pepper sprays, cayenne powder mixes and lastly a scary squirrel-scare-crow that moved and made noise.
I think the squirrels actually multiplied as word spread throughout all squirrel-dom of his attempts to keep them out. They most likely also appreciated the free tomatoes. Finally he decided on a much more rudimentary approach ala Elmer Fudd. (insert Fudd laugh here) So after purchasing a laser scope for his rifle and spending several hours precisely calibrating it, he then erected a squirrel blind – a huge cardboard box covered with mud and grass. The extremely direct approach of simply blowing their poor little fuzzy heads off was quite successful. The first evening he managed to massacre at least 5 of the poor little things. Without bothering you with the gory details of the slaughter, by the end of the first week he had managed to kill 21 squirrels. It was at this point the flaw in the plan was exposed. The lack of sleep from sitting up well into the night waiting for the squirrels to attack, possibly coupled with some phone calls from concerned neighbors about a guy in his pajamas discharging a firearm after midnight became a concern for the family and an intervention was planned. It was a simple intervention in which he was lured out of his tomato garden by the promise of a “supposed” door-to-door tomato supply salesman. At which point my brother simply hid his gun. We then introduced him to the wonderful world of live capture traps. You bait the trap, the critter runs in to get the food, the trap closes. You can then relocate the critter to a nice distant forest. After realizing this was a much better approach than doing another tour of duty in the tomato garden. My father rigged about a dozen traps at strategic locations, which he had marked on his map. This apparently showed where the squirrels thought he was weakest and often planned their attacks. He did at least realize finally he could sleep while the traps did their job.
Sometimes, however, things work too well. He soon found himself as keeper of about 8 unhappy live trap inhabitants. To keep this story short let’s just say that transporting live animals for relocation can pose a number of…problems.
The CKY Books warehouse is relatively close to where my father lives and I told him that we have lots of room around the warehouse, with no farms or produce but ample trees. He could release the cute little furry guys around here.
At first this seemed to be a perfect solution, and for the last month or so he has been transplanting a few squirrels a week to our general vicinity. Everyone who works here has enjoyed a lunch break while watching the new squirrel population.
Did you know squirrels are evil? They may be cute but that is all part of their natural defenses. Squirrels are also apparently very social and once the first one found a way into the warehouse he decided to share the route with all other neighboring squirrels. Not only are the evil, they seem to believe that pages from books make good nesting.
Tomatoes, Squirrels and Books don’t mix.
I’ve already got my traps on order.
Friday, April 30th, 2010
Have you ever read a book that you enjoyed, then squirmed, then disliked, then cried and then, at the end of it all, you realized you really really liked it?
Now you know the journey I took while reading “American Taliban”. The book opens in August 2000 following a privileged young man’s journey as he moves from surfer/skater through his study of Islam and ends in May 2002. Perhaps because 9/11 and the Taliban tend to be such a core part of the American conscious now, it was easy to forget sometimes that I was reading fiction. There were quite a few uncomfortable situations in the book (see above: squirmed) and quite frankly, while watching the progression from privilege to Taliban, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to finish the book. But in the end, Abraham brings everything full circle. That’s not to say that the book finishes neatly wrapped up and shiny — not at all. But it does feel complete. After the rollercoaster held within, I closed the pages with a sense of peaceful sorrow.
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
The spring semester is almost over. Students are starting to consider their options with their used books. Local or campus bookstores are frequently the fastest, easiest method for textbook buybacks. However, if this is the only route you have ever considered, you are missing out. These stores are often overwhelmed with textbooks at the end of the semester. If the class is offered the following semester and they have three hundred copies, the demand is low, so the price you receive will be as well.
Thankfully there are now options beyond the campus bookstore, campus bulletin board or your bookshelf. There are a growing number of online programs, some of which will accept international editions of textbooks as well. With these online programs you have the opportunity to receive a higher price for your textbook. There are two different types of online buyback programs.
Text book buybacks are similar to selling to a bookstore. You sell directly to the company and receive payment from them. The positive side to this method is that you know from the time you enter the ISBN on their site whether it will be accepted. You also know that payment will be sent shortly after the book is received at the book company. The down side is that based on the number of copies the reseller currently has as well as the fact that they find a new buyer, they take a larger percentage of profit. Programs differ somewhat from one site to the next, so take a look at their Frequently Asked Questions page for details. Information regarding the types of books, condition and shipping methods can usually be found there. If there are specific types of international additions that are not accepted, it is addressed as well.
The second option involves selling directly to the new buyer via the site. As the seller, you set the price making the sale more profitable. The down side is that it may take some time to match the selling price with a buyer. Before deciding on the type of program, there are a few questions to ask yourself. Can I wait for the money? Once the book is sold, can I pack and ship it quickly? If you answered yes to these questions, the direct to buyer option my work for you.
Whether you are a student of faculty member, there are many opportunities to turn your unused books into cash. For more information, or if you have any questions, please contact us at info@ckybooks.com or via the form on the “Contact” tab.
Friday, April 23rd, 2010
“Pinion” by Jay Clark (sequel to “Escapement”) was released March 30. I picked up both novels at the same time and read them back to back. If you have not read Escapement, I suggest you do the same. Although Pinion has a completely different feel, a lot would be lost without the first half of the story.
“Pinion” picks up immediately where “Escapement” left off. Clark continues his system of dedicating a few paragraphs/pages to each character’s situation and viewpoint. It’s an effective method for maintaining the many threads of the storyline. There’s a lot of details & action to keep up with but I never felt bogged down. There was no time to get bored with a plot line before switching to simultaneous events. This was particularly enjoyable when he switched between two characters in the same place. It was fun to see how differently they experienced and reacted to the exact same elements.
The novel was chock full of battles, intrigue and magic but to label it as simply an adventure story would be a disservice. Clark also tenderly weaves love through the pages. And make no mistake, the love stories are just that – purely love. There is no romance, flowers or frills. It is pure emotion and dedication grown from shared circumstances and respect that bond these characters. And just for good measure, Clark tosses in spiritual implications as well, not so subtly touching on the characteristic s and purpose of a soul as well as human’s ability to play at being gods.
This was a multilevel book that had me contemplating it several days after I closed the cover. Taken at surface value, it’s a great escapade. Dig deeper and it will stick with you much longer.
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
Yesterday my (almost 13 year old) son, who has become quite the avid reader, picked up my current book and asked what it was about. I immediately responded “Doesn’t matter. It’s not a kids’ book and you’re not going to read it.”My reaction visibly startled him. We both frequent the “teen” and “adult” sections of the library equally. As often as not, I pass on to him the books I’ve just finished – and vice versa. While I am aware of what he’s reading and have on the rare occasion vetoed a choice, I don’t know that I’ve ever shut down an inquiry quite so forcefully. In truth, I reacted the way I did because the book made ME uncomfortable in spots and certainly addressed issues I’m not quite ready for my child to broach. And that realization got me thinking. How DO we define young adult literature?
Obviously there are books/series that are written, marketed and published with a young adult audience in mind. But many of those end up popular with the adult crowd: Harry Potter, Twilight. On the other hand, there are books originally written with an adult audience in mind that are now commonly considered young adult reading: Catcher in the Rye, Huckleberry Finn. (It does seem though that modern day literature tends to cross over from young adult to adult rather than the opposite.)
I thought maybe writing from a young adult’s perspective or having a young adult protagonist might be a fair criteria but I can’t even support that idea. Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and Ian McEwan’s Atonement are both written from the perspective of a young adult but are both considered adult novels.
My son and I just finished a series that I thoroughly enjoyed but would categorize as young adult. On the other hand, I also enjoyed and finished another book (different from the one mentioned initially) but would never let my teen near it. In many ways the two are similar. They’re both fantasy novels containing fey creatures. Both have conflict and injuries and death. Both address relationships and love and sex. But the writing in Series A handled it all in a realistic manner that I felt was still appropriate for my 13 year old boy. Series B was much more graphic.
So is graphic description an indicator of young adult literature? I don’t think that’s a fair criterion just as I don’t agree that language or subject matter is fair criteria. I say this for one primary reason: what I consider appropriate might – most likely – differs from what you would consider appropriate. That being said, I’d love to hear from you guys that work (or have worked) in a book store or library or publishing house. I’d love to hear from you guys that have young adult readers in your life. How do YOU classify literature as young adult?
