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Jan 19, 2014

Struggling second-hand bookshop owner stunned when his takings soar 4,000 per cent as dozens of customers descend on store after posting about his plight on Facebook

A struggling second-hand bookshop owner who wrote about his dwindling profits on Facebook in a last-ditch attempt to keep his business afloat has seen his sales figures soar.

David Ford found he was steadily losing business – making only around £14 a day at his store in Saltaire, West Yorkshire – thanks to the popularity of online bookstores such as Amazon as well as the rise of the e-book.

Realising his shop was in trouble, Mr Ford posted his takings online alongside a cry for help and was amazed by the response.

Sales for most bookshops have been dwindling but David Ford is confident he can keep his store open

In just one day he raked in more than 40 times the amount he had made only a few days earlier.

Mr Ford said: ‘Now, we have to be more clever about how we sell books. We sell online and we use social media and do all sorts to survive.’

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The bookseller, who is also the chairman of the Saltaire Traders Association, went on to say: ‘The point I’m making is if people don’t use local shops, then they will disappear.

‘Independent shops are part of a community, which will be lost if they are forced to close as people choose to buy online or in supermarkets.
'There has been a decline and we have to work harder to get people through the doors.’

David Ford in his bookshop that has been saved from dwindling sales by social media

Second-hand bookshop owner stunned as takings soar

The Facebook status plea that re-invigorated the bookshop's business

Speaking about his decision to appeal for help online, he said: ‘It was a particularly hard week last week. Many people earn four times as much as us shopkeepers do.

‘I put something on Facebook to say this is the reality of it, this is what we earn, to try and encourage people to use their local shops and services. It was a very positive response.’

He added: ‘There is something wonderful and unique about books. I’m certain they will never go away. We want to get people into books but this won’t happen without bookshops.’

David Ford was amazed by the response when he posted about his shop's takings on Facebook

Mr Ford has had to embrace the digital age to help with sales at his second-hand bookshop

Figures show that in 2012, 73 independent bookshops closed and 29 opened, according to membership figures from the Booksellers Association.

And around one-third of independent bookshops closed in the last seven years. Lisa Campbell – from trade magazine The Bookseller – believes that despite independent booksellers being squeezed by online retailers, increases in rent and business rates, many are trying to fight back.

She said: ‘Holding events such as author signing, book group sessions and poetry readings are key to their sustainability in their local communities, as is offering expert knowledge on books and recommendations.
They rely on customer loyalty to thrive and many do buck the trend when they get this right.’

Ford has piles of books that remain unsold and has turned to the internet to help with sales

Jan 9, 2014

George Orwell Explains in a Revealing 1944 Letter Why He’d Write 1984

in History, Literature | January 9th, 2014 3 Comments

Most of the twentieth century’s notable men of letters — i.e., writers of books, of essays, of reportage — seem also to have, literally, written a great deal of letters. Sometimes their correspondence reflects and shapes their “real” written work; sometimes it appears collected in book form itself. Both hold true in the case of George Orwell, a volume of whose letters, edited by Peter Davison, came out last year. In it we find this missive, also published in full at The Daily Beast, sent in 1944 to one Noel Willmett, who had asked “whether totalitarianism, leader-worship etc. are really on the up-grade” given “that they are not apparently growing in [England] and the USA”:

I must say I believe, or fear, that taking the world as a whole these things are on the increase. Hitler, no doubt, will soon disappear, but only at the expense of strengthening (a) Stalin, (b) the Anglo-American millionaires and (c) all sorts of petty fuhrers of the type of de Gaulle. All the national movements everywhere, even those that originate in resistance to German domination, seem to take non-democratic forms, to group themselves round some superhuman fuhrer (Hitler, Stalin, Salazar, Franco, Gandhi, De Valera are all varying examples) and to adopt the theory that the end justifies the means. Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralized economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organized and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer.

Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.

As to the comparative immunity of Britain and the USA. Whatever the pacifists etc. may say, we have not gone totalitarian yet and this is a very hopeful symptom. I believe very deeply, as I explained in my book The Lion and the Unicorn, in the English people and in their capacity to centralise their economy without destroying freedom in doing so.

But one must remember that Britain and the USA haven’t been really tried, they haven’t known defeat or severe suffering, and there are some bad symptoms to balance the good ones. To begin with there is the general indifference to the decay of democracy. Do you realise, for instance, that no one in England under 26 now has a vote and that so far as one can see the great mass of people of that age don’t give a damn for this? Secondly there is the fact that the intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people. On the whole the English intelligentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accepting Stalin.

Most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history etc. so long as they feel that it is on ‘our’ side. Indeed the statement that we haven’t a Fascist movement in England largely means that the young, at this moment, look for their fuhrer elsewhere. One can’t be sure that that won’t change, nor can one be sure that the common people won’t think ten years hence as the intellectuals do now. I hope they won’t, I even trust they won’t, but if so it will be at the cost of a struggle. If one simply proclaims that all is for the best and doesn’t point to the sinister symptoms, one is merely helping to bring totalitarianism nearer.

You also ask, if I think the world tendency is towards Fascism, why do I support the war. It is a choice of evils—I fancy nearly every war is that. I know enough of British imperialism not to like it, but I would support it against Nazism or Japanese imperialism, as the lesser evil. Similarly I would support the USSR against Germany because I think the USSR cannot altogether escape its past and retains enough of the original ideas of the Revolution to make it a more hopeful phenomenon than Nazi Germany. I think, and have thought ever since the war began, in 1936 or thereabouts, that our cause is the better, but we have to keep on making it the better, which involves constant criticism.
Yours sincerely,
Geo. Orwell
Three years later, Orwell would write 1984. Two years after that, it would see publication and go on to generations of attention as perhaps the most eloquent fictional statement against a world reduced to superstates, saturated with “emotional nationalism,” acquiescent to “dictatorial methods, secret police,” and the systematic falsification of history,” and shot through by the willingness to “disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer.” Now that you feel like reading the novel again, or even for the first time, do browse our collection of 1984-related resources, which includes the eBook, the audio book, reviews, and even radio drama and comic book adaptations of Orwell’s work.

Related Content:
George Orwell’s 1984: Free eBook, Audio Book & Study Resources
The Only Known Footage of George Orwell (Circa 1921)
George Orwell and Douglas Adams Explain How to Make a Proper Cup of Tea
For 95 Minutes, the BBC Brings George Orwell to Life
George Orwell’s Five Greatest Essays (as Selected by Pulitzer-Prize Winning Columnist Michael Hiltzik)

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, literature, and aesthetics. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Facebook page.

Jan 6, 2014

Sushinomics: How Bluefin Tuna Went From Cat Food to Solid Gold

The curious case of the million-dollar fish

Svati Kirsten Narula Jan 5 2014, 9:31 PM ET

Kiyoshi Kimura paid a lot of money for this bluefin tuna, the first one auctioned off at the Tsukiji fish market in 2013. (Toru Hanai/Reuters)

Every year, on the first Saturday in January, Japan makes a grand statement to the global fishing community by putting an exorbitant price on the head of a single bluefin tuna. At the famous Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, the first bluefin auction of the year represents many things: growing consumer demand for bluefin sashimi, the exploitation of natural resources, the collapse of a species, shortsightedness in the face of impending doom to the entire ocean, a depraved publicity stunt.

In 2013, Kiyoshi Kimura, the owner of a Japanese sushi restaurant chain, paid $1.76 million for the first bluefin at Tsukiji, which weighed 489 pounds. Kimura had paid $736,000—a world-record price at the time—for the first tuna of 2012. That fish weighed 593 pounds.

Issei Kato/Reuters
It's no surprise, then, that journalists were steeling themselves for what was sure to come on January 4, 2014: If the past decade's trend in pricing continued, this year's first tuna would surely fetch more than a million dollars. But the Tsukiji fish market bucked tradition this weekend and sold its first tuna to Kimura, yet again, for a mere $70,000. That's still way more money than most bluefin go for in Japan. But compared to what everyone was expecting—an extravagant sum to start off the new year and remind us that these are the most prized fish in the sea—that's one crazy cheap tuna.

Although the significance of the almost-$2 million tuna in 2013 was recognized worldwide, not everyone agreed on what that said about the actual value of global tuna stocks. It was tempting to see the price surge as a function of the fish's rarity, but then why weren't restaurants raising the prices of the bluefin dishes on their menus?

Andrew David Thaler, who writes about the ocean on his blog Southern Fried Science, had this to say about the many factors at play in the Tsukiji auction last January:

I’m certain that we’ll see this number presented as an argument against bluefin tuna fishing, as an example of an industry out-of-control, and as a symbol of how ruthlessly we'll hunt the last few members of a species to put on our dinner plates. These issues are reflected in the tuna market, but I want to urge caution in drawing too many conclusions from this record breaking number.

There are several issues in play at the first tuna auction of the year, and only some of them relate to the tuna fishery. Among the patrons of the Tsukiji fish auction, it is considered an honor to buy the first bluefin of the new years, and bidding wars reflect this fight for status. The massive international headlines that follow the purchase of such a fish is free advertising for the winner. As many auction-goers know, landing a high, early win is a way of marking your territory and letting your competitors know that you have the bankroll to push them out of a bidding war.

If $1.8 million is actually what this fish is worth to the consumer, it would sell for a hefty $345 at the dinner table, minimum. The owner, Kiyoshi Kimura, reports that the tuna will be sold at a huge loss–about $4.60 per serving.

All three species of bluefin tuna are currently overfished, and over the last few years attempts to protect bluefin tuna have been thwarted by fishing interests in Japan, New Zealand, the United States, and Mediterranean countries, among others. While this record breaking sale should serve a clarion call for increased scrutiny of the global tuna trade, it does not accurately reflect the market value of the fish.

What should we make of the dramatic nosedive in bluefin bidding at this year's auction? To answer that, we need to understand how this species rose to such prestige in the first place.

In the 1960s, no one wanted bluefin. In the United States, the fish sold for pennies per pound, and it was usually ground up for cat food. Japan fished for it, but few people there liked the bluefin's bloody, fatty meat. Then sushi bars started cropping up in America, and Americans developed a taste for toro—the prime meat of the bluefin's belly. By the 1970s, the Japanese had also developed a taste for bluefin.

From a NOAA Technical Memorandum published in 1999.

All of a sudden, bluefin was one of the most sought-after fish not only by Japanese fishermen but also by American and Canadian ones. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, between 1970 and 1990 fishing for bluefin in the Western Atlantic increased by more than 2,000 percent. The average price paid to Atlantic fishermen for bluefin exported to Japan rose by 10,000 percent. And it was mostly all being exported to Japan. Even today, a bluefin caught off the coast of New Hampshire will be shipped off to Tokyo before ending up on sushi plates somewhere else.

Before the 1970s, only Japan and the U.S. fished for bluefin, and in the U.S. it was mostly ground up for cat food. Then Japan started paying to import vast quantities for sushi, and a handful of other countries got in on the action.

The graph above was published in a 2013 stock assessment by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-like Species in the North Pacific Ocean. It was this stock assessment that prompted the Pew Environment Group to announce, just days after Kimura bought his tuna for $1.76 million, that global bluefin tuna stock has declined by 96.4 percent from pre-1950 levels.

That this year's first tuna sold for $70,000 instead of $2 million could be a positive sign that the Japanese are more aware of the bluefin's plight and no longer wish to call attention to their harvest—or it could mean that all is really lost for this fish, and people just don't care how rare it is anymore.

Chris Park/Associated Press

There are a lot of numbers in this story, but when I think of bluefin tuna, I don't see percentages or dollar signs. The first thing I ever learned about this fish came from reading Carl Safina's book Song for the Blue Ocean. Not 500 words into Chapter One, Safina describes sighting a bluefin in the Atlantic:

What caught my eye was a faint chevron bulging ever so slightly from that molten, glassy sea, fifty yards from where I sat adrift. As I rose to my feet to study it, the chevron grew to a distinct wake. A wake without a boat. The wake ran along the surface for a few seconds, accelerated, and exploded like a revelation.

A giant bluefin tuna, among the largest and most magnificent of animals, hung suspended for a long, riveting moment, emblazoned and backlit like a saber-finned warrior from another world, until its six hundred pounds of muscle crashed into the ocean like a boulder falling from the sky. The jagged tear it left in the sea was marked by an emerald patch of fine bubbles rising slowly to the surface until the spot healed, slowly turned blue again, and became indistinguishable.

... Ashore, the vision of that giant tuna never dissipated.

I've never seen a bluefin, but Safina's description of the fish has burned bright in my mind ever since I read that book.

There's more. Safina flies over the Gulf of Maine one morning with a professional fish spotter, and they encounter a hundred of these tuna on the move:

About a hundred giant bluefin tuna are traveling peacefully just under the surface. The animals I am looking at are so large, I expect them to behave like dolphins; that they are not coming to the surface to breathe air feels somehow uncomfortable. I have to remind myself—it seems so odd—that these large creatures are truly fish.

Close your eyes. Think fish. Do you envision half a ton of laminated muscle rocketing through the sea as fast as you drive your automobile? Do you envision a peaceful warrior capable of killing you unintentionally with a whack of its tail? These giant tuna strain the concept of fish.

The giant tuna rise in unison, their backs breaking wakes like a flotilla of small boats. As they continue cruising, one of them splashes and sprints forward a few yards, like a thoroughbred jittery before a race, its behavior hinting strongly of enormous power in repose. What sense of the world, what feeling, moves this animal? Is it impatient? Is it thinking?

If you're moved more by literature than by charts and graphs, like I am, but you don't have access to Safina's book, then another great way to learn about the bluefin is by reading this essay, by John Seabrook, published in Harper's magazine in 1994. In "Death of a Giant," Seabrook cites a $30,000 tuna as evidence that it's the most valuable wild animal in the world. Twenty years later, prices are even higher—and the extinction Seabrook ponders is that much closer.

Family spots missing man in cold weather news photo

Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Nicholas Simmons, 20, of Greece, N.Y., warms himself on a steam grate with three homeless men by the Federal Trade Commission, just blocks from the Capitol, during frigid temperatures in Washington, Saturday, Jan. 4, 2014.

By Daniel Arkin, NBC News

A man missing since Wednesday was found by his family after this photo appeared in the pages of USA TODAY.

Nicholas A. Simmons, 20, disappeared from his family's house in a tiny upstate New York town on New Year's Day. Three days later, a photographer with the Associated Press documenting the bitter cold in Washington, D.C., took Nicholas' photo as he warmed himself on a steam grate just a stone's throw from the U.S. Capitol.

Paul and Michelle Simmons — Nicholas' parents — saw the photograph of their missing son in the Sunday edition of USA Today. After authorities intervened, the parents reunited with Nicholas in Washington later that day.

The photo, taken Saturday by AP photographer Jacquelyn Martin, showed Simmons with his unshaven face pressed against a grate outside the Federal Trade Commission. He wore a ski jacket and a hood over his head. A thick gray blanket covered his lower body.

Martin was assigned to the White House that weekend, but with President Barack Obama still on vacation in Hawaii, she spent the day looking for shots that would illustrate the cold weather. That is how she found Nick Simmons, in an area where homeless people often gather when it is frigid outside. She found a cluster of men huddled around the grate, introduced herself and started taking pictures.

Then she noticed one person in particular, huddled under a blanket.

"It struck me how young he was," Martin said. "I again introduced myself and shook his hand. He said his name was Nick."

Martin finished shooting, sent the pictures to the wire and called it a day. The next day, she received a message via Twitter from USA Today.

The newspaper had run the photo of Nick and was contacting Martin to tell her that Nick's family had recognized him and was trying to locate him. Michelle Simmons was certain that the young man in the photograph was her son, missing for four days.

Police picked Simmons up Sunday afternoon and took him to a hospital, said police Capt. Patrick Phelan. Simmons' father, Paul, and older brother Paul Jr. arrived in Washington Sunday night and were reunited with Simmons at the hospital, said longtime family friends Peter and Cindy Gugino.

Martin, the AP photographer, said the episode serves as a reminder to journalists that every person they encounter has a story to tell.

"It's really gratifying to see that a photograph can make a tangible difference in someone's life. That's a really amazing thing to have happened," she said. "I'm happy and touched that the photograph could help reunite this family."

Police said authorities notified local media and tried to investigate the case, but there were no leads until the publication of the photo.

"It was pure dumb luck how all this happened," said Sgt. David Mancuso, the lead investigator. "It's truly a miracle."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Nov 27, 2013

Young people prefer printed books to e-books, survey finds

A young reader with a printed book at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

(Arne Dedert / EPA / October 12, 2013)

Here’s something to consider when you’re Christmas shopping for that teen or young adult in your family.

Yes, young people spend a lot of time reading and writing short messages on their smartphones, or listening to music and playing games on those and other electronic devices. But there’s one aspect of their lives in which they prefer -- by a large margin, according to one poll -- the old-school ways: reading books.
The British marketing research agency Voxburner recently surveyed more than 1,400 people, ages 16 to 24, about their media-consumption habits. The survey found that 62% of the respondents said they prefer printed books to e-books.
Voxburner spokesman Luke Mitchell told the Guardian that the agency’s researchers heard all sorts of reasons why young people prefer physical books to e-books, including: “I collect,” “I like the smell” and “I want full bookshelves.”
“Books are status symbols; you can’t really see what someone has read on their Kindle,” Mitchell said.
In an earlier report, Voxburner found that a substantial plurality of young people surveyed also said they believe that e-books were too expensive.
What’s more, as the British trade journal The Bookseller put it: “The report suggests that publishers should look at how young people download content, because although about 85% have a smartphone, only 55% have some kind of e-reader.”
“The only reason I haven’t bought an e-reader is because I love the feeling of holding a book in hand and seeing the creases in the spine when I'm done,” a young reader named Zoe told Voxburner. “It’s like a little trophy.”
hector.tobar@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-young-people-prefer-printed-books-survey-20131126,0,7125735.story#ixzz2luGoqqlV