My Google news filter for "Science Fiction Fantasy Publishing" turned up a fascinating story in the Salt Lake City Weekly:
Ken Sanders has a multitude of friends, most of them long dead and on a shelf at his funky Salt Lake City bookstore.He has enemies, too, the kind who call and make death threats. As chair of the security committee for the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), Sanders knows the once genteel rare-book business has fallen prey to Internet fraud, credit card theft and e-auction forgeries. Even international cartels, not content to limit their business to arms and oil, drugs and extortion, have discovered that rare books are portable, can be moved quickly across several time zones, fetch huge sums from collectors and can be liquidated swiftly, when necessary, through an Internet auction site such as eBay. The kinder, gentler days of the book trade, where deals were sealed simply with a handshake, seem over.
Salt Lake City Weekly - Book 'em Ken!
Posted by bill at May 30, 2004 11:55 PM