At HPB, one of our primary missions is to provide the biggest variety of printed and recorded merchandise you’ve ever seen. But we can’t do that without YOU! Of course we buy and sell a huge variety of books, but we offer so much more, based on what customers like you sell to us each and every day. As our co-founder Ken Gjemre used to say, “We buy everything printed and recorded, except yesterday’s newspaper.”
Whether Marie Kondo has convinced you to “tidy up” those closets and bookshelves or you’ve been bitten by the Spring Cleaning bug, we’re happy to help. Let’s take a closer look at the many kinds of things you can bring us for cold, hard cash! Continue reading →
EDITOR’S NOTE: This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores. For September, we’re getting our hands dirty with a look at the history of comic books, graphic novels and manga.
TIMELINE 1933Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, the first modern American comic book, is published. 1938 The superhero archetype is born with the debut of Superman in Action Comics #1. 1964 The first underground comic, Frank Stack’s The Adventures of Jesus, debuts. 1992 Art Spiegelman’s Maus becomes the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.
DID YOU KNOW?
The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck (1837) featured art in sequential panels and corresponding text below, making it a precursor to the modern comic book.
The Comics Code Authority was formed in 1954 in response to public concern over graphic content in comics. Titles from major publishers bore the CCA seal until the early 2000s.
Japanese comics known as manga exploded in popularity after the Second World War.
Want to dive deeper? Check out these great products!
EDITOR’S NOTE: This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores. For August, it’s all fun and games—video games, to be exact.
TIMELINE 1940 A computer playing the traditional game Nim is displayed at the World’s Fair. 1958 A tennis game played using an analog computer and an oscilloscope is demonstrated at Brookhaven National Laboratory. 1962 Spacewar, the first computer-based video game, is invented by an MIT student. 1975 Atari partners with Sears to release its arcade game Pong for the home market. 1985 Nintendo’s NES revives an ailing American video game industry two years after its original release in Japan, where it was called Famicom. 1995 Sony releases PlayStation in the United States. When PlayStation 2 debuts in 2000, it becomes the dominant home console. 2001 Microsoft enters the market with Xbox and hit games like Halo. Xbox 360 would debut four years later.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores. For July, we’re going way back to cover the history of the paperback.
DID YOU KNOW?
The modern paperback was born in 1935 with the hit debut of Penguin in the United Kingdom. Founder Allen Lane’s goal was to sell affordable, high-quality books to the masses in places like train stations. Their minimalistic, type-driven cover designs, color-coded by genre, became iconic.
Inexpensive paperbound books called dime novels were published in the US starting in 1860. Their British counterparts were called penny dreadfuls.
In 1939, Pocket Books launched in the US with 10 titles priced at 25¢ each. By comparison, a hardback might cost a few dollars. Pocket sold their books in subway stations, newsstands and drugstores, reaching new readers and forever changing the bookselling industry.
Small enough to fit in a uniform pocket, paperback books were carried by soldiers in World War II. One writer noted that “if the back trouser pocket bulged in that way,” it indicated that the soldier was a reader.
TIMELINE 17th cent. Early softcover books are printed in Europe. 1935 Penguin publishes its first paperback, Ariel, a biography of Percy Shelley. 1938 The first US paperback, Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, is released by Pocket and sold at Macy’s as a test. 1950 Using the brand Gold Medal Books, Fawcett begins publishing original fiction in paperback, as opposed to reprinting titles originally released in hardback. 1960 Sales of paperbacks pass those of hardcover books.
Want to dive deeper? Check out these great products!
EDITOR’S NOTE: This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores. For June, we’re hitting rewind to check out the history of home video.
TIMELINE 1950s & 1960s Early videotape formats are used in broadcasting but are too expensive for consumers. 1975 Sony’s Betamax format debuts. Some early players included a 19-inch color monitor. 1976 The first VCR using VHS (Video Home System), the Victor HR-3300, debuts in Japan. 1977 RCA’s VBT200 becomes the first VHS-based VCR in the US. 1987 90% of VCRs sold in the US are based on the VHS format. 2006A History of Violence is the last major film released on VHS. 2016 The last known manufacturer of VCRs ceases production.
DID YOU KNOW?
Betamax had a better picture, smaller tapes and debuted first. But VHS won the “format war” thanks to longer recording times and less costly players.
LaserDisc, introduced in 1978, was the first optical disc format for home video. It was a hit with cinephiles and paved the way for DVD and Blu-ray.
With the advent of the VCR in the 1970s, consumers could, for the first time, own copies of their favorite movies and record TV shows to watch later.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores. For May, we’ve stepped through the looking-glass to learn about the history and development of children’s literature.
TIMELINE 1658Orbis Pictus, the first children’s textbook with pictures, is published. 1744 John Newbery releases A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, considered the first children’s book. 1942The Poky Little Puppy is among the first 12 Little Golden Book titles. 1963 Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are raises the level of artistry in children’s picture books.
DID YOU KNOW?
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, published in 1865, was a watershed in children’s literature. Its emphasis on fantasy and childlike imagination was a departure from earlier works for kids, which were largely educational and reality-based.
Competition with the Soviets fueled US efforts to create more engaging books for young readers. One result was the Beginner Books imprint, founded in 1957 by Phyllis Cerf, Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and Helen Geisel.
Released in 1942 and still in print today, Seventeenth Summer by Maurine Daly, is often cited as the first modern young adult (YA) book.
~~~
Want to dive deeper? Check out these great products!
EDITOR’S NOTE: This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores. For April, we’ve got some groovy info on the history of sound recording.
DID YOU KNOW?
Thomas Edison’s phonograph, using a rotating cylinder wrapped in tinfoil, was the first machine to play back recorded sound. The first recording was Edison himself reciting the opening lines to “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
Columbia Records introduced the 12-inch, 331/3 rpm long play record in 1948. Lighter and less brittle than its predecessors, the vinyl LP would come to dominate the recorded music market. Musicians took advantage of the LP’s extended playing time to create album-length artistic statements.
TIMELINE 1877 Thomas Edison invents the phonograph. 1889 Emile Berliner’s gramophone, which uses discs instead of cylinders, debuts. 1949 RCA Victor introduces the 45 rpm single a year after Columbia debuts its 331/3 LP. 1957 Stereo records appear. 2007 Vinyl, long considered obsolete, resurges in popularity.
Want to dive deeper? Check out these great products!
This year in our HPB calendar, we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we buy and sell in our stores.
For February, we’re covering a product that’s been a mainstay at HPB since we first opened: magazines.
TIMELINE
1731 The Gentleman’s Magazine debuts in England. Its publisher invents the word “magazine” based on the Arabic word “makhazin,” meaning storehouse. 1741 Early American magazines include Ben Franklin’s General Magazine. 1842The Illustrated London News is the first magazine with illustrations. 1898Ladies’ Home Journal becomes the first US magazine to have one million subscribers. 1923Time ushers in the weekly news magazine 1944Seventeen, the first magazine targeted to teens, debuts. 2015 Approximately 7,300 different magazine titles are published in the United States.
DID YOU KNOW?
In the 19th and 20th centuries, American magazines spread trends nationwide and helped create a shared pop culture.
Around 1900, popular magazines like McClure’s began publishing pieces by reform-minded investigative journalists. Known as muckrakers, these writers aimed to expose corruption in business and government.
This year in our HPB calendar (you got one, right?) we’re celebrating all things printed and recorded—and played, solved, watched, etc. In other words, all the cool stuff we sell in our stores.
For January, we’re taking a look at the development of books and printing. A good place to start, huh?
DID YOU KNOW?
Books were costly and relatively rare before the innovations of Johannes Gutenberg. In 1439 he developed a system of printing—using movable type and a wooden press—that was quickly adopted throughout Europe and beyond, leading to increased production of books and the spread of knowledge to the masses.
Movable type, where individual characters are used to create words imprinted on a page, existed as early as 1045 in China. Gutenberg was the first to make type using metal, using an alloy of lead, tin and antimony.
Mental Floss calculated that, throughout history, about 134,000,000 unique book titles have been published.
TIMELINE
2nd cent. BCE In India, texts written on palm leaves are bound with twine between two boards. 1st cent. The codex appears. With folded pages bound on one side between two hard covers, codices are portable, easy to use and presage the modern book. 1455 Gutenberg completes his 42-line Bible, printing 180 copies. 1810 The steam-powered printing press leads to greater speed and efficiency. 1843 Book production flourishes thanks to the steam-powered rotary press.