Hugh Hollowell

Buying at auctions has consistently been one of my better sources. There are several reasons for this, among them a big one is lack of competition. In a thrift store, say, you are competing against not only all the other dealers who stop by, but also the general public, the lady who puts the books out and who knows who else. At most traditional auctions, you might have 3-4 people who are interested in the same lot you are (at most), you usually can get a list of the items in advance so you can do your research in advance and you can schedule your buying time in advance and know the “good books” will not sell before you get there.

One problem with most traditional houses (barring the biggies like Swanns and Pacific Book Auctions) is finding out about them. Some of the better ones are almost in-house secrets.

Enter Auction Zip. Just enter your zip code, drill down through some parameters and you are set. You can even have them send you updates based on the criteria you select. Oh; and it is FREE (free is good).

I hate MySpace. I really do. It has a clunky interface, the “blogging” function is horrible and it has taught a generation of people to use the word “blog” incorrectly.

That being said, it does have the real estate. Almost once a month or so someone from my past who I want to talk to finds me on mySpace and sends me a message. It happened just last week when my friend Anthony found me over there. (What up, A!).

I feel forced to keep my page up over there, but because of the clunkiness, I just hate updating the thing or sending messages or whatever it is you do over there. Luckily, I found a solution (I think).

I do all my personal updates on this blog here (hughhollowell.com/blog). I was actually considering duplicating my posts over there, but decided I would rather take a bullet in the gut first. I found this page, which made a small dingus which I put in my mySpace page. This dingus now shows my last five blog posts from this blog on that page, so my mySpace peeps will know what is going on. It might also draw some of them away from mySpace and into the real internet…

I uploaded some pictures of Raleigh to my Flickr account. Anyone can view them, but if you have a free yahoo.com account you can sign into Flickr with that and leave comments.

Raleigh Pictures 

I saw her in Moore Square today; I thought it was just hilarious.

(no handicapped people were injured in the taking of this picture) 

The astute among you may have noticed already, but today I remodeled my website and gave this blog a new header.

The website is a work in progress, so be gentle with criticism.

Further, in the “it never fails” department, while futzing around with my own website, a paying client actually asked me to do paid writing work for them, so my not-paid work must go to the side. On the upside, did I mention it was paid work?

Well, one week ago today I left for Raleigh, and one week ago yesterday I closed my bookstore in Memphis for the last time.  It feels very weird not having a shop for the first time in nearly five years. I keep feeling guilty for sitting in a coffee shop, writing on my laptop.  My cellphone, which rang nearly off the hook in Memphis, is strangely silent, prompting me to check it every 20 minutes or so to make sure it is still on.

On the up side, I am getting a ton of writing and web-work done.  I have re-activated several old sites I had in hiatus:

Book-Links is where I moved all my book selling articles I had written over the years.  In addition, I am now updating it regularly with tools and tips for booksellers.

Small Business Owner Insights was originally to be a newsletter, but that never panned out. Now I have it set up as a site for small business owners, where I point out deals and free stuff for business owners and hopefully, over time I will be able to add more resources.

I do make money doing this stuff (it is hard for me to believe some times), but often it has had to take a back seat to running the store.  Here is hoping that with increased attention  the blogging income will grow.

Jed Birmingham, a Burroughs collector of some note, gave a stirring write up on his blog of the Baltimore Antique Show. He mentioned several booksellers of note, including Between The Covers, Lux Mentis and Royal Books.

He goes into tremendous detail and waxes so nicely about Ian at Lux Mentis, you would swear he is being paid.

Thanks to Ian for pointing it out.

If you are buying from (or selling to) someone on eBay with tons of feedback, there is no easy system in place to only see the negative feedback. If someone has 500 feedback but 10 negatives, I want to see what those negatives were. If they have trouble shipping in a timely manner, if they pack everything in a shopping bag, if they are going to ship me my book in a Count Chocula cereal box, I want to know about it.

That is why I use the feedback tool at Toolhaus. If you enter the seller ID of the eBayer in question, they will root out the bad feedback and put it all in one place, saving you from scrolling through pages and pages.

It is no secret that I am a big fan of Wendy Piersall. Truth is, she just plain rocks.

Well, earlier today she announced the expansion of her emomsathome brand; she has expanded into a full blown media empire, with a total of 7 blogs and 9 authors all under the emomsathome umbrella.

From her announcement:

• Ebay Selling for eParents is authored by Megan Jordan from Velventeen Mind
• Dad Balance is authored by Derek Semmler from DerekSemmler.com
• Freelance Parent is authored by Lorna Doone Brewer from Something Good & Tamara Berry
• CraftBoom! is authored by Lisa Lam from U-Handblog
• Parent Product Reviews is authored by Erika Jurney from The Plain Jane Mom Blog
• Seasonal Kids’ Activities is authored by Shannon Hutton from Believer in Balance
• And [the original blog] is staying put. For those of you worried about anything changing too drastically, my blog, the “Original Recipe eMoms at Home” will always be here to talk about affiliate marketing, parenting, blogging, social media, empowerment, and everything else that you have come to know and love.

Our congratulations to Wendy and company. She just keeps raising the bar higher and higher.

If you sell on eBay, have your own website or just want to post in your favorite web forum, it helps to know some HTML.

Most of what I know about HTML, I learned by cutting and pasting. Here is a good list of cut and paste HTML tags.

If you want to write your own, here is a practice board where you can try your code.

If, however, you are too lazy or just can’t be bothered, you can always use this online HTML editor to write your own code.