From The Editor by Craig Stark #141, 25 January 2010

Boo! That didn't scare you? Well, maybe today's first article, Part X of my Bookselling in the 21st Century series, will. It's a look at a recently released report by the Kaiser Family Foundation on what our kids are up to, "Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds." This is a compilation of three studies completed in, respectively, 1999, 2004 and 2009 that chronicle what for booksellers is the bloody truth. Negative truth is often more useful than positive - and in this case, I think much more.

If you've missed any of the previous installments in this series, here they are:

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX

Also today, Pamela Palmer's Top 10 on eBay. Her preview: Twilight, Rand, Tolkien, and King are no surprise in the fiction top 10. But what about Robert Frost and Chaucer? Both made the list in November 2009. The non-fiction list features the familiar (Sumo, Ruscha, and a signed Easton Press title) and the unusual (a Japanese photo book from the Vietnam War, gold mine maps from 1896, and an association copy of Game of Chess: A Poem published in 1736). On the Antiquarian & Collectible side, #1 is a Picasso book containing both the artist's signature and a drawing; it sold for $30,000. The 1960 book was listed by a Peruvian seller and is followed on the list by two Bibles, A Farewell to Arms signed by Hemingway, and Alcoholics Anonymous.

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