New ways of professional journalism in bookseller
Even as a student I was a loyal Readers of financial newspaper supplement "from the bookseller, and a small reader letter in response which I defended my colleagues Tenschert should, at the same time be with Decorative wet / Allmendingen, one of the oldest AdA contributions of colleagues who are still living. Back then I had the fussy style of the editor very annoyed and AdA was for me the paradigm of a cold, vain and pompous old man out sheet. Much of it has survived to this day to keep the tilt Björn Beasley, human emotions in journalistic freezer, the ADA do for me today as a model example of an impersonal professional journal. As a personal encounter with the old editorial but was very warm, we were of one mind about many issues, I got to know a fascinating professional woman, I saw AdA from now on with quiet emotion. My hope for a new style under a new editor soon proved illusory. I, unfortunately, with Björn Biester "can not", is in his financial newspaper network service read in many places. Different temperaments can not imagine as I write echauffiert in the tropical heat of the Amazon, he sits impassively on the windows in an unheated British castle hall and type in mittens. So then his journal.
You already know how nice I touch the style, the manners and the spontaneous warmth of booksellers in the United States. This goes back to the days when I was allowed to prepare fora U.S. cooperative "Tom Folio," the local database and other community services in well over a thousand posts read along, in the - in vain - hope that anything transferring them to the German cooperative to. Since then, I see the way with a few smears and the British and Dutch colleagues, the booksellers of foreign countries as a representative of a sympathetic and open and friendly guild. Terrible and completely incomprehensible to me is the contentious cold, the ugly suspicion that intriguing Rivalry, which proposes to meet me in German forums, only in France, the climate in the bookseller more icy and shameful. I have no real explanation for this phenomenon is known only by virtue of my good memory, that there was this horrible "German" sound in the bookseller already in magazines in 1900 and 1930.
With horror I remember the years of bickering about 1890 on the question of whether and how and when the German antiquarian or the German bookshop modern bookseller, which was then called junk, should lead and should and whether it was defamatory or not. When it then turned out that most Jewish colleagues were arguing the pro-junk, also slipped in an instant anti-Semitic tones. I had about 30 years ago almost by accident investigated in connection with Karl May Edition questions in book trade journals, but today I choked on the tone of disgust among German antiquarians over a century ago. All this has not changed obviously. That idyll that looking at us from some historical AdA-essays, there has been only in specific circles. Otherwise, hateful feud prevailed in disgusting, stubborn animosity. Are German booksellers like that?
Each specialized journalism on German bookseller in this area must also unhappy how do the unpleasant mood bill. Best to let the booksellers at rest, reported above about them, but not with them. Time and again, media projects have tried to booksellers actively involved. Carried by endless embarrassment, the attempt by me always sympathetic Stormchens, some colleagues from their toxic-defiant reserve were to entice and engage in his bookseller Gazette, "one must read between the lines and have some background in order to be seen pity. RFMeyer was also trying to set up a web site together with minimal publicity Community, hastily pushed into the corner of the anschmusenden vain and advertising colleagues. With deep horror I remember posts in the style of Xing-forum for me in parts a look into the abyss of cantankerous, malevolent, distrustful colleagues.
As any journalist but felt the irresistible drive and good to include the subject of his work with in the process of reporting, we must consider how professional journalism for the bookseller may be made for the German area. The solution we know from reports of ARD from the GDR. Lothar lion on the front! If it is almost impossible to develop a cooperative, trusting and open relationship style with those which we have to report, then we treat them just as inhibited, incompetent, or otherwise prevented speechless creatures, f u of the trade RThe publicist has to speak. That is not necessarily a degradation of the antiquarians, rather the knowledge - that it is currently not just different not know, understand, can understand, and - that we have to write as a professional journalist for them.
Such view of an entire industry also takes quite absurd (unthinkable in other professions) into account, that the stratification of the trade of the Good, simple flea market dealers on the halbverblödet with w + h-materials newer titles eintippenden average Internet antiquarian up (not necessarily to "high") to the ground clever enough specialists and top-hand booksellers. Only a responsible professional journalism is in a position to these limits and layers to overlook them in order of forces and thus helping everyone. Just at this task, Beasley and his AdA has been broken their teeth in vain, he staggers into projects and choice of subject and target helpless between small Ebay colleagues and high and mighty Wiener auctioneers back and forth. So reasonable and wise, the reflections, however, he almost never involves the stratification of the industry with a grotesque, alienated by some of the more technical users, and deepened the depths yet, such as the design of their school projects.
It is not about paternalism. The editor must simply know better. But if he has no better track than the average antiquarian, where he has to admit it too. Journalists live dangerously, because they have an extreme - even if only occasionally - knowledgeable audience before him. Two examples. The influence of the Auctioneer at the bookstore is far greater than is commonly assumed. Nevertheless, it is not reported (also from the pen of the long-AdA auction experts to mills I have not read much about it), because few booksellers really know how a German book auctioneer works internally. Rather by accident I gained a thorough insight here. - In the shop local bookseller nature is a lot of important insights into the behavior, psychology, etc. can be observed had the book collector, on the Internet antiquarian of the present time has no more plain and simple. Long-serving shop booksellers have this knowledge at hand of course. How difficult it must be for the Internet-only colleagues to put oneself in anywhere near the almost forgotten world. We know our customers even more intimate! One must also know how smells, if the customer is sweating because he wants a title to have, as its Deception are his tricks, his behavior and arguing for defects discounts. Also getting the psychology of the convoluted sale ... At trade shows it all comes just over damped and controlled. Place of knowledge was his own shop!
After these rather obvious findings, we are scraping the barrel. Specialized journalism in the field of antiquarian has to stand on two legs when she wants to be successful: it serves as well as the antiquarian book collector.
here by most of the trade media, the worst mistakes are made.
Mortal sin is that is maintained constantly and against better knowledge that every cloud cuckoo land, the fog formation of a "bibliophile". "The Bibliophile" even "serious book collector," "Fair customer", "auction visitors referred should, so goes the tale, and querbeet" expensive books, "" rare books "," bibliophile books "to collect. He was building with titles about 50-100 € a "bibliophile selected collection of books" in that it is possible it "offer rare title of" forever, and what are the more pious tales.
This book collector is almost extinct, perhaps it has given him a closer look, almost never.
The truth is far more difficult to represent: Almost every serious book collector collects only or predominantly the title of his oh F range. Here the conceptual difficulties begin, because we have very often not one of the classical disciplines of us. We get rather a complicated web of partly overlapping, even wild and illogical transverse themes wishes, books types, value, or cover ways to illustrate or state of preservation, publication period or Buchhandelsart (see "booklet"), religious or philosophical tendency, sexual orientation, regression (Girl Books Biedermeier, all of Karl May, all the "defiant" volumes) can be decisive.
This all has to do with the classic "bibliophile" very little. Because it is mostly "free appropriate" collected from the truth rather dull drives. Precisely why I encourage the scientific fussy edge bruising, with whom we AdA tortured for half a century, like so: This has almost nothing to do with the real, effective drives in the brain and soul of our customers. The moment when a book collector sits down to - an anonymous intentioned example - to write for a beautiful beasts scientific treatise on Struwwelpeter spending, as it distorts the real drive, the real basis of his collection almost always. How will it look truth in the soul of a man who has collected these horrible monstrosities Frankfurt sadomasochism of "children's books with abandon.
see similar results in several areas of collecting. that everyone must discover for themselves, psychoanalysts will be able to quickly tell me why I collect from childhood just old railway timetables. In parentheses it should be noted that the skilled antiquary knows the real drives his collecting customers - or should know that.
However, two things must be recorded. First, the "scientific" customer of the antiquarian collection issues not covered in journalism be in the bookseller. Rather - I had long discussions with the former editor of AdA about it - should be the subject of a book of scientific and historical books magazine. be the fixed idea of AdA, even such a book historical-scientific journal to do, now two generations of booksellers and book collectors, to yawn, to excruciating boredom has led. The editors of AdA was in their mind's eye at the thought of how it is looked at by the readers inclined to look in a sea of gaping mouths gaping wide. Even today, the special honey yellow of the AdA-envelopes of earlier times is hnen for me is synonymous with G u - I yawn now even curtains or Polsteresesseln in the suit.
Who has a good memory, who remembers, in addition to the very smart bookseller displays in fanfold paper of the previous 90 years, a published in Hannover, rather short-lived magazine for booksellers and book collectors. It was designed awkwardly formal, despite the beautiful color photos, but took a series of articles on collecting technical issues that were exactly the same "shut down" as it would gutgetan almost all scientific papers in Ada - and would still be good.
Why do the media specialist bookseller in the area so hard? Despite these massive writing problems, of, for and with all the booksellers, it is the other side, the customer, which is far greater technical demands of each editor. For it must willy-nilly all collections can be observed. That might tackle yet, when the media were limited to querzulesenden reference journals. But today there are also books for remote collection areas often have multiple blogs, forums, portals, Diskussionmsmedien. It makes no sense to talk about the world of book collectors, without relating to each of rd.100 most clearly defined book collecting topics to maintain a general overview. This is more laborious than the reporting about the bookseller from the seller side.
As it is the claim: a trade magazine in the Internet age, which will report on "Books", must booksellers, and link their customers such that both a regular return and gladly to the portal, in which "their" affair of the heart is negotiated.
One or two technical comments. There is only the possibility of electronic publication, the paper form must vanish in this special case. The Antiquarian medium of the future in fact, lives of the multitude of information sources linked from there directly. Any visitor, whether Altbuchhändler or book collector must know that he goes above about this intersection of the new medium to bookseller sites, references, lists of any kind must He have direct access to Amazon (with search box) for ZVAB to Abebooks. All this is possible only in electronic form. The design, however, should be conventional to the mostly elderly customers into account - no tricks, no the drop down text bubbles, no hopping, running, Twitching, and use those harmonious colors, which prefers the age. No toilet bowl, lime green, no arterial blood red, no infamous "modern" pale gray text. Please do not ...
The photo shows Karl May in 1875 as an editor ("observer on the Elbe", etc.)
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