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It’s time to celebrate outstanding book design once again.

Tickets are now available for the PANZ Book Design Awards.

DATE: Thursday 22 July

TIME: 6pm – 8pm

VENUE: Auckland Art Lounge, Auckland Art Gallery, CNR Wellesley & Lorne Sts.

Karen and Steve Pettigrew have owned Take Note Tawa for 18 years and three name changes; initially it was Local Value, then Books & More and from 2006, Take Note.

When the Pettigrew’s bought the store, it had a good range of books and that is something they have kept up over time.

Getting a New Zealand Post franchise in 1994 has helped grow the business, as has the subsequent addition of Kiwibank to their services.

from The Economist; Mar 31st 2010 | New York

A children's bookshop is working with security staff of a nearby tavern and casino over the growing problem of parents leaving children to read while they gamble.

"If a child becomes distressed we will find out where the parent is and return the child to them," said Mary Sangster, who is office manager of The Children's Bookshop Christchurch, which also owns Dorothy Butler Children's Bookshop in Ponsonby, Auckland.

"We work with security people where kids have been left in the shop.

One of the reasons behind the Commerce Commission’s decision to take Visa and MasterCard to court last year (you will recall that they settled at the eleventh hour) was that the Australian Reserve Bank’s intervention in 2003 had the effect of reducing credit card interchange fees from 0.95 per cent of transaction value to the current less than 0.5 per cent.

The new credit card charges will come into effect by April 17, although banks can make changes earlier if they wish, says New Zealand’s Commerce Commission.

from Lincoln Gould, Booksellers NZ CEO (reporting from San Jose)

Imagine a reader coming into your bookstore with their cell phone linked to Google, buying an e-book, and your bank account is credited with the 30% retail margin for that book.

This is the essence of the Google “cloud” concept outlined today by Daniel Clancy of Google Editions at the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute, attended by 500 booksellers in San Jose, California.

April sees the introduction of a policy change for credit card fees: where formerly it was part of your agreement with your bank not to pass on credit card charges to the consumer, this will now change.

So the dilemma is: to pass on the fees as an added charge to your credit card customer? Or not?

Some background

All prepared for Christmas, right? You have your Distant Early Warning System in place to make stock reorders in a timely fashion. You have (gulp) invested all the money you can muster in stock you are sure will move. Store hours are in place, staff rosters done.

So what might you have overlooked?

Last December we ran the following article, by Ross Middleton, in the Booksellers News. It was full of such valuable tips for the Christmas season, we thought we’d refresh your memories.