Toni Morrison - Natural Beauty

She's definitely my loc mentor. Grey, braided ends, yep that's me.

Where to Find Work for Teens This Summer - WSJ.com

Where to Find Work for Teens This Summer - WSJ.com: "Where to Find Work for Teens This Summer



By RACHEL LOUISE ENSIGN

Teenagers may have to dig harder to find a job this summer.

Only about one-quarter of 16- to 19-year-olds are expected to find seasonal work this year, down from nearly half in 2000, according to a report from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. That's projected to be the lowest figure since records of teen employment began in 1948.

With unemployment still high, adults are taking many of the jobs typically held by teens, says Joe McLaughlin, co-author of the report. And companies that laid off workers during the recession have been slow to rehire -- especially seasonal staff.

So where should teens be looking? The sectors that traditionally employ younger workers are still the best bet: retail stores, hotels and restaurants. Though these places have cut back on teenage hires, more than half of kids who will work this summer will have jobs in these sectors, according to U.S. Census data analyzed by the Center for Labor Market Studies.

Fast-food restaurants, which have done well through the economic downturn as more people have opted for lower-cost options when dining out, are still hiring teens for the summer. So are seasonal eateries like ice-cream shops and juice bars.

Teens also can find jobs assisting janitors in hotels or picking up balls at golf courses. But workers under age 18 may have a tough time finding work at the mall. Many of those jobs have been taken by older teens and adults who are still struggling to find better-paying work.

One bright spot for teen workers: health care.

In hospitals, teens under age 18 can find work as file clerks or cafeteria workers. Those 18 and over can work as a nurse's aide or patient escort, says Renée Ward, founder of teen job board Teens4Hire.org. Teens can do similar jobs in nursing homes and assisted-living centers, Ms. Ward says, which are expanding as the elderly population grows.

But young workers can forget about construction and manufacturing jobs this summer. Since the housing bust, there are far fewer construction projects under way. And after a decade of laying off workers, manufacturers are now having their existing employees work longer hours, reducing the need for summer help, says Mr. McLaughlin.

Many teen-friendly companies list available jobs on Teens4Hire.org, GotAJob.com and Snagajob.com/teen-jobs. For instance, Yowza, which developed a coupon application for smartphones, is planning to hire 10,000 teenagers age 14 and over this summer through Teens4Hire.org. The teens will be paid a commission for each local business they get to provide coupons for their products through the Yowza app.

Some career experts say teens with a skill may have better luck giving entrepreneurship a shot. For example, kids who excel at math, science or computer technology could start a tutoring or website-development business.

With more competition for fewer jobs, career experts say it's important for teens to look and act professional during an interview -- regardless of how casual the actual job is. They also should bring a résumé . If teens don't have a work history to list, they should put down any school, sports, extracurricular and volunteer activities, says Alison Doyle, a job-search expert for how-to website About.com. And they should indicate if they've had any leadership roles, such as team captain or running a club.

Dave Hastings says the small minority of teens who showed up to interview for lifeguard, swim instructor and pool maintenance positions at his Brecksville, Ohio, pool-service company and dressed professionally, had a résumé and wrote a thank-you note afterward greatly improved their chances of being hired. The reason: It showed they were responsible and professional, Mr. Hastings says.
—Email: rachel.ensign@wsj.com

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Ten Things That Can Get You Fired - Finance and Accounting Jobs News and Advice

Ten Things That Can Get You Fired - Finance and Accounting Jobs News and Advice: "Ten Things That Can Get You Fired
By Kelly Eggers

i

Ten Things That Can Get You Fired

By Kelly Eggers

Nobody wants to get fired. Most people avoid it by generally doing good work and keeping complaints about their jobs to themselves or close family.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. There are many things that can get you fired beyond the obvious; you don't have to burn down the office to earn a pink slip.

"If you have created a situation for yourself where there's some level of dissatisfaction with your performance, any organization will figure out where there is an option or a point of entry where they can separate you from them," said Roy Cohen, a New York City career coach and author of The Wall Street Professional's Survival Guide. "Assuming you're in an employment-at-will environment, you don't ever have to be told why you're being fired."

Most professional employees are "employees-at-will," which means that they can be fired for any reason – or none at all. Employment-at-will laws vary from state to state, but if you're not in a union or don't have a contract, they likely apply to you.

It may not be fair to get fired because you choose not to shower, think you're smarter than your boss or have issues admitting when you're wrong, but it can happen. Here are ten ways to get thrown off your job.

1. Get Conveniently Sick

It's okay to take sick days when you need them, but if you take too many at the wrong times, it could mean more free time to convalesce.

"If you want to get fired, repeatedly call in sick on Mondays," said Randy Merrell, vice president of operations at Elite Network, a San Francisco-based search firm. "Muscle up and get yourself in there. Hangovers are no excuse."

The same goes for vacation days, said Cohen. Ditching the company for a few days of sun and surf in the middle of a busy season reflects poorly on your dedication to the well-being of the business.

"An administrator in my client's department had a key role in planning a major event, and the admin called in sick for three days the week before the event," said Cohen. A check of her records showed that she had a pattern of calling in sick around major events. "All of the work gets dropped on others' shoulders. Her sick days might have been legit, but they were legit too frequently," he said. That, when combined with her sloppy work and incomplete projects, got her cut from the roster.

2. Lie on Your Job Application

Everyone beefs up their resume, and assumes that once they have the job, it's no longer important what they did to get it. Not so fast. If your job performance lags, your resume may be reviewed again. An inconsistency or poorly timed embellishment could be used to get rid of you.

"If they're dissatisfied with you and then they find out that you lied, that's an easy ticket for them," said Cohen.

For example, Bruce Hurwitz, president and CEO of New York-based Hurwitz Strategic Staffing, recalls a staff member at a former employer who noted on his resume that he had his CPA when he did not. He had taken all the coursework, but did not take the exam.

"He had the job, was doing a good job, but was fired on the spot when his boss found out he had lied on his resume. The job didn't require a CPA, but the boss checked to see if he had it anyway," said Hurwitz. "Even though it wasn't a requirement, it reflected on his character."

3. Be Disgusting

If you aren't diligent with your hygiene, people probably aren't going to go out of their way to keep you around.

"I have a number of clients who are managers that have employees who were unkempt," said Cohen. "When it came time for downsizing, they were at the top of the list."

You might think that hygiene habits should be a personal decision left to each staff member's own discretion, but Cohen said that the reach of bad body odor goes beyond the cubicle around you. "It's engaging in anti-social behavior," he said. "Not bathing, being unkempt... You have to be very careful, especially if you're in a client-interfacing role."

4. Stay Anonymous

As the old adage goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you always keep your head down, never remind your boss of your accomplishments, and aren't a familiar face to the higher-ups, you aren't going to be remembered for what you're worth when headcount is being shaved.

"It's not enough to just work hard, stay late, and be intelligent," said Linda Farley, founder of Farley Training, a San Antonio-based management coaching firm. "It shows you're not a team player. If you don't speak up in meetings and share your ideas, you'll be the one who doesn't have ideas," instead of the one who works late and meets deadlines.

"People need to know you as a person before they can trust you as a worker," she said.

5. Never Compromise

An ego is arguably a necessity in the business world. But a big head that's consistently getting in the way of efficiency and teamwork is a head that will roll.

"If you're not forceful to the proper degree in promoting your own ideas, you're not going to get anything accomplished," said Hurwitz, but you have to be able to do it in the proper way.

Those who always need to do things their way, "come across as single-minded and critical of others' ideas," said Cohen. "If your ideas are smarter than everyone else's, they'll rise to the surface and be appreciated -- unless you don't listen to anyone else, ever."

6. Be Ungrateful

With unemployment hovering around 9%, try to be thankful for what you have, instead of whining about what you think you deserve. A lack of humility can earn you a pink slip.

"If you want out, ask for a raise before a round of job cuts, and get angry when they don't give it to you," said Cohen. "It shows poor judgment."

Another way to get the ax, said Cohen, is telling your boss that the work they're providing you with is beneath you.

In one word, complain. "That's how you get your name at the top of the list," said Cohen.

7. Don't Respect the Chain of Command

It's likely that the current chain of command in the office has long been in place, and for good reason. Except in the most extreme of circumstances, experts recommend respecting it.

"When you're emotionally intelligent, aware of your surroundings and know who the players are, you have a sense of what you should say when, and when you should keep your mouth shut," said Farley. "You know when you should go over someone's head, and when you should follow the chain of command."

No matter how much you hate your boss or how dumb you think he is, it's usually career suicide to reveal those sentiments to a higher-up.

8. Spend Time With the Complainers, Non-Performers and Gossips

When company information is leaked or major deadlines are missed, someone will likely be fired. Even if you weren't involved, you don't want your name associated with those of the usual suspects.

"Even if you're not a non-performer or a complainer yourself, if you're associated with them, people will start thinking of you in that way," said Farley of Farley Training.

There's a "birds of a feather" mentality to this one -- if you're in a clique with your most toxic colleagues, it's easy for your boss to liken you to them. "If you are associated with the gossip, it's going to be assumed you are spreading rumors too," said Hurwitz, of Hurwitz Strategic Staffing.

9. Never Take Responsibility When Things Go Wrong

Take a page out of former Rep. Anthony Weiner's book on this one. If you do something stupid, don't lie about it. The truth will come out -- and you'll get a lot of negative attention if you're forced to admit you tried to cover up.

"It's not the crime, it's the cover-up," said Hurwitz. "If you're the source of bad news about you and if you admit to your mistakes and you don't repeat them, that's a positive. You'll get credit for it."

But if you blame failed technology, time crunches, or the errors of your colleagues when things go awry and you're to blame, you're expendable.

10. Take Credit for Other People's Work

No one likes a freeloader. If you are the worker who never presents an original thought at work, or you take credit for others' accomplishments, you're likely to find yourself out the door.

"One guy stole commissions from co-workers when everyone was out on Christmas break," said Merrell at Elite Network. Commissions at the company were given to the person who did the legwork and sold the services to the client, said Merrell, not by the person who answered the phone when the client called to conclude the sale. "The company policy was that you gave commission credit to the correct person, even when they were out," said Merrell. "I took great pleasure in firing this guy."

Write to Kelly Eggers

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Make a Temp Job Last - WSJ.com

Make a Temp Job Last - WSJ.com:

By DENNIS NISHI

Tamara Guion-Yagy was disappointed when Tetra Tech, an environmental engineering firm in Pasadena, Calif., hired somebody else for the job that she wanted. The 40-year-old graphic designer thought she was being tried out when the firm hired her as a temporary worker.

So Ms. Guion-Yagy worked even harder at the same temp job, often staying late to finish work. Her manager responded by creating another full-time position for Ms. Guion-Yagy. "I knew I'd be good at the job and liked the work," she says. "I just needed to show them how much."

Dennis Nishi

When times are prosperous, companies are more likely to use temporary jobs as a low-risk way to vet full-time candidates. But the conversion rate from temporary to permanent worker has been low over the past few years as more companies lean on temps as a hedge against a double-dip recession, says Jonas Prising, president of Manpower North, a temporary-staffing company in Milwaukee, Wis.

"That's why temps should do what they can to stand out in some way to improve their chances of getting hired full time or at least having their contracts renewed," he says.

Become a source of ideas by really understanding the needs of your company and figure ways to apply your talents to this end. If you have logistics experience, for example, and know that consolidating shipping through a single supplier can save money, why not present your ideas in writing to the boss?

Be punctual and friendly, replace the office coffee with a gourmet blend or do anything else to increase your visibility in the office. Small gestures can make a lasting impression.

Work your way into the everyday office culture so co-workers will think of you as a colleague and somebody they can rely on. Laurie Ruettimann, a human-resources professional from Raleigh, N.C., recommends participating in workplace functions like office parties, picnics and lunch outings.

Volunteer for company-supported activities like charity work. It helped Sailor Brown get a full-time job at financial-services firm E*Trade Financial in New York. A weekend March of Dimes event gave the 40-year-old executive assistant the opportunity to interact with her boss and co-workers in a casual setting. And it allowed them to connect the hard-working temp from the office with a real human being who's easy to get along with. Ms. Brown says she was hired full time soon after the event.

But don't pester everyone about becoming a full-time employee. Put out your best work and let your actions sell you. Keep note of your accomplishments and bring them up when it's time to renew your temporary contract.

Just being on the inside gives you an advantage over external candidates when applying for full-time jobs, says Mr. Prising. But don't get complacent. Ready some options for when your contract is up.

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Clarence Clemons, E Street Band Saxophonist, Dies at 69 - NYTimes.com

Clarence Clemons, E Street Band Saxophonist, Dies at 69 - NYTimes.com

By BEN SISARIO

Published: June 18, 2011

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Clarence Clemons, the saxophonist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, whose jovial onstage manner, soul-rooted style and brotherly relationship with Mr. Springsteen made him one of rock’s most beloved sidemen, died Saturday at a hospital in Palm Beach, Fla. He was 69.

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Clarence Clemons performed with the E Street Band during the Super Bowl halftime show in Tampa in February 2009.

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Mr. Clemons in 2009.

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The cause was complications from a stroke, which he suffered last Sunday, said a spokeswoman for Mr. Springsteen.

From the beginnings of the E Street Band in 1972, Mr. Clemons played a central part in Mr. Springsteen’s music, complementing the group’s electric guitar and driving rhythms in songs like “Born to Run” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” with muscular, melodic saxophone hooks that echoed doo-wop, soul and early rock ’n’ roll.

But equally important to the group’s image was the sense of affection and unbreakable camaraderie between Mr. Springsteen and his sax man. Few E Street Band shows were complete without a shaggy-dog story about the stormy night the two men met at a bar in Asbury Park, N.J., or a long bear hug between them at the end of the night.

Mr. Clemons also became something of a celebrity in his own right, acting in Martin Scorsese’s “New York, New York” and other films, and on television shows like “Diff’rent Strokes,” and jamming with President Bill Clinton at the 1993 inaugural ball.

A former college football player, Mr. Clemons towered over Mr. Springsteen at 6 feet 4 inches and about 250 pounds — his self-evident nickname was the Big Man — and for most of its history, he stood out as the sole black man in a white, working-class New Jersey rock band. (The keyboardist David Sancious, who is also black, played with the group until 1974.) Onstage he had almost as much magnetism as Mr. Springsteen, and even if much of his time was spent hitting a cowbell or singing backup, he could still stir up a stadium crowd with a few cheerful notes on his horn.

For many fans, the bond between Mr. Springsteen and Mr. Clemons was symbolized by the photograph wrapped around the front and back covers of the 1975 album “Born to Run.” In that picture, a spent yet elated Mr. Springsteen leans on a shoulder to his right for support; the flip side revealed that it belonged to Mr. Clemons.

“When you look at just the cover of ‘Born to Run,’ you see a charming photo, a good album cover, but when you open it up and see Clarence and me together, the album begins to work its magic,” Mr. Springsteen wrote in a foreword to “Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales,” Mr. Clemons’s semifictional memoir from 2009, written with Don Reo. “Who are these guys? Where did they come from? What is the joke they are sharing?”

Clarence Anicholas Clemons was born on Jan. 11, 1942, in Norfolk, Va. His father owned a fish market and his grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher, and although he grew up surrounded by gospel music, the young Mr. Clemons was captivated by rock ’n’ roll. He was given an alto saxophone at age 9 as a Christmas gift; later, following the influence of King Curtis — whose many credits include the jaunty sax part on the Coasters’ 1958 hit “Yakety Yak” — he switched to the tenor.

“I grew up with a very religious background,” he once said in an interview. “I got into the soul music, but I wanted to rock. I was a rocker. I was a born rock ’n’ roll sax player.”

Mr. Clemons was also a gifted athlete, and he attended Maryland State College (now the University of Maryland Eastern Shore) on a scholarship for football and music. He tried out for the Dallas Cowboys and the Cleveland Browns, but a knee injury ended his hopes for a football career.

He was working as a youth counselor in Newark when he began to mix with the Jersey Shore music scene of the late 1960s and early ’70s. He was older than Mr. Springsteen and most of his future band mates, and he often commented on the oddity — even the liability — of being a racially integrated group in those days.

“You had your black bands and you had your white bands,” he wrote in his memoir, “and if you mixed the two you found less places to play.”

But the match was strong from the start, and his saxophone soon became a focal point of the group’s sound. In an interview with The New York Times in 2005, Jon Landau, Mr. Springsteen’s manager, said that during the recording sessions for “Born to Run,” Mr. Springsteen and Mr. Clemons spent 16 hours finessing the jazzy saxophone solo on that album’s closing song, “Jungleland.”

Mr. Clemons’s charisma and eccentricity extended offstage. Wherever the band played, he made his dressing room into a shrine he called the Temple of Soul. He claimed to have played pool with Fidel Castro and won. And by many accounts, including his own, he was a champion partier on the road. He was married five times and divorced four. His fifth wife, Victoria, survives him, as do four sons: Clarence Jr., Charles, Christopher and Jarod.

Mr. Springsteen put the E Street Band on hiatus on 1989, and apart from reuniting for a recording session in 1995, the group did not play again until 1999. But by the mid-1980s, when Mr. Springsteen reached his commercial peak, Mr. Clemons had already found fame on his own. In 1985 he had a Top 20 hit with “You’re a Friend of Mine,” on which he sang with Jackson Browne, and played saxophone on records by Aretha Franklin and Twisted Sister. Recently he was featured on Lady Gaga’s album “Born This Way.”

Mr. Clemons’s first encounter with Mr. Springsteen has become E Street Band lore. In most tellings, a lightning storm was rolling through Asbury Park one night in 1971 while Mr. Springsteen was playing a gig there. As Mr. Clemons entered the bar, the wind blew the door off its hinges, and Mr. Springsteen was startled by the towering shadow at the door. Then Mr. Clemons invited himself onstage to play along, and they clicked.

“I swear I will never forget that moment,” Mr. Clemons later recalled in an interview. “I felt like I was supposed to be there. It was a magical moment. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love. And that’s still there.”

Books for Low-Income Families - NYTimes.com

Books for Low-Income Families - NYTimes.com

A Book in Every Home, and Then Some

By DAVID BORNSTEIN

Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work.

Tags:

books, children, Education, Literacy, publishing

When we imagine people without books, we think of villagers in places like Afghanistan. But many families in the United States have no children’s books at home. In some of the poorest areas of the country, it’s hard to find books for sale. A study (pdf) of low-income neighborhoods in Philadelphia, for example, found a ratio of one book for sale for every 300 children. Tens of millions of poor Americans can’t afford to buy books at all.

Tapping a vast potential market of young readers too poor to buy books.

At Fixes, we like to highlight creative ways that markets can be harnessed to extend access to vital services like electricity, credit, or water. Today, I’m focusing on a nonprofit organization called First Book, which is spearheading a new market mechanism that is delivering millions of new, high quality books to low-income children through thousands of nonprofit organizations and Title I schools.

The First Book Marketplace is trying to do for publishing what micro-finance did for banking: crack open a vast potential market that is underserved at significant social cost. The organization’s goal is to democratize book access, but along the way, it may end up reinvigorating the book business.

Some 42 percent of American children — more than 31 million — grow up in families that lack the income to cover basic needs like rent, child care, food and transportation. “These are families that are not buying books at retail,” notes Kyle Zimmer, the co-founder of First Book. “Not only are we losing 42 percent of kids whose families can’t afford books; the industry isn’t reaching 42 percent of its potential market. The system isn’t serving them.”

In bookstores, most hardcover children’s books sell for $15 to $20, with paperbacks typically running from $5 to $10. Although lower cost titles are available, the pricing of books — especially the most popular and attractive children’s books, as well as baby board books — puts regular book buying out of reach for low-income families.

This situation might be acceptable if books were luxuries, like silk scarves. But educators contend that access to books should be seen as a necessity, alongside access to food, shelter and health care. Indeed, numerous studies have shown that making books more accessible to children — through libraries, reading programs and home libraries — can produce marked improvements in their reading behavior. A meta-analysis published last August found that access to books plays a “causal role” in children’s motivation to read.

It’s often assumed that families without books lack interest in reading. But that is not necessarily the case. “When poor people, even those at low literacy levels, have a little extra money, they will buy inexpensive books,” explains Susan B. Neuman, a professor at the University of Michigan, who specializes in early literacy development and co-authored the study in Philadelphia. “But some families have so little disposable income, they can’t afford any books.” This is bad news for their kids. Around the world, one thing that has been shown to be a consistently powerful predictor of academic achievement is a home library. [1]

First BookChildren at Children’s Zone Promise Academy in Harlem reading one of their new books from a First Book distribution.

What makes the problem even worse is that 80 percent of pre-school and after school programs serving low-income children do not have any children’s books, either, largely because they lack the money to buy them. “A poor child goes from a home without books to a pre-school situation without books,” says Neuman. “That creates serious problems for literacy later on.”

There are many factors that influence children’s reading and no one is claiming that books alone will solve the problem. However, some noted educators, such as Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, have argued that “simply providing access is the first and most important step in encouraging literacy development.”

Libraries can make a huge difference — but inequalities persist there too. A study of book access in Los Angeles, co-authored by Krashen, found that school classrooms in Beverly Hills offered children eight times as many books as classrooms in Watts and Compton. Their school libraries also carried about three times as many titles and their public libraries carried roughly twice as many. Moreover, libraries in poor communities are open fewer hours.

First Book was founded by Kyle Zimmer and two colleagues. Zimmer had previously worked as a lawyer and community organizer. She got an intimate view of poverty while working as a volunteer tutor for poor children in Washington, D.C. Zimmer became close with some families and visited their homes — where she discovered an absence of children’s books. “I think it’s a surprise to almost anybody of modest means that there are families and children in this country without books,” she said.

She saw that children’s eyes lit up when they were given a book of their own, particularly a new book with an attractive cover. Kids would say, “Can I really take this home?” Some would add: “This is my first book.” They would go home and do their best to read it — and then they would come back and ask for another one.

First Book established volunteer chapters in hundreds of communities across the country. The organization would purchase books and donate them to groups helping low-income kids to read — everything from schools to reading groups in church basements, from Head Start programs to public shelters. “There is an army of volunteers and professionals out there who are working their hearts out in the least romanticized environments — in destitute communities, in high crime areas. We’re sending them no supplies at all — and we’re surprised when they fail,” says Zimmer.

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More From Fixes

Read previous contributions to this series.

In 1999, the organization piloted the first national book bank in the United States, an online system to distribute bulk book donations from publishers to thousands of reading programs. To date, First Book has distributed close to 85 million books.

In recent years, however, the limitations of the book bank have become apparent. Publishers, facing tough times, have trimmed costs and cut print runs, which means less excess inventory for donation. At the same time, recessionary pressures mean less money for schools and nonprofits from foundations and governments. But the children still need books. “We would put up 400,000 books for distribution on the book bank and 36 hours later they’d be gone and we’d be turning thousands of organizations away,” Zimmer explained.

In 2008, First Book launched its marketplace with the goal of making books systematically available at deeply reduced prices — typically 50 to 90 percent off — to any organization that was certified tax-exempt and serving children in need. First Book offered publishers an intriguing deal. Even though the profit margins would be much smaller than normal, because the organization could aggregate sales across its network, it could make bulk purchases and remove the publishers’ biggest risk: returns. All sales would be final. First Book promised to be hyper-vigilant that books sold through its marketplace would not bleed into normal retail channels.

It took a while for the idea to catch on. “A few publishers were tiptoeing when we started,” explained Zimmer. “But now they’re pretty jazzed, because we pay on time and they haven’t seen any wobble in their retail market that has to do with us.”

Most books on the marketplace sell for under $4 with the average paperback going for $2. All shipping costs are included in the prices. Currently, there are close to 2,000 titles. “Where the Wild Things Are” (retail $8.95) sells for $2.79. “Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Sleeping Dog” (retail $5.50) sells for $1.85. “To Kill a Mockingbird” (retail $7.99) goes for $3.50. First Book’s chief financial officer, Jane Robinson, recalled: “People came to us and said, ‘The children are all talking about “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and we don’t want our kids to be left out — but we can’t afford it.” Now it’s available for $3. A special bilingual edition of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” sells for $3.25.

For publishers, the timing is fortuitous. Long term sales projections have been flat. This year, First Book expects to sell 3.5 million titles — close to 1 percent of unit sales in the U.S. children’s book market. At present, the marketplace is still relatively unknown — only 27,000 out of an estimated 1.2 million eligible programs have signed up. First Book’s goal is to be working with 250,000 programs in three years.

Publishers have historically had difficulty serving low-income buyers. “This market is incredibly fragmented,” explains Lisa Holton, who ran Scholastic Trade and Book Fairs and Disney Global Children’s Books. “Because First Book has been completely focused on this area for so long, they really know the customers.”

Publishers are also excited by the content possibilities. Many people go into publishing because they believe in the transformative power of books. Sometimes editors want to publish books that meet real needs, but if the market is risky it’s hard to go forward. First Book is in a position to survey thousands of organizations and ask what they want to teach. If enough groups request, say, Native American stories or Mandarin-English dictionaries or Spanish translations of midlist books, First Book can present publishers with a safer market.

Chandler Arnold, the executive director of the First Book Marketplace, explains: “Publishers have historically had to fight hard for their slice of the market segment. Here we’re making the entire market bigger. What we want to do is unabashedly change the way our country educates our hardest to reach children — and do it in a way that generates revenues for the publishing industry so that they take it up.”

I asked Zimmer if she was worried that publishers would eventually start competing with First Book rather than partnering with the organization. “The goal for us is fixing the access problem not commandeering every sale,” she said. “If we can play a role in waking the industry up to the viability of this market, then we’ll call it a win. We will be toasting each other with mint juleps on a cause well done. And I’ll go out and get a real job.”

On Friday, I’ll respond to comments and highlight two organizations that bring books to children in need.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A study of close to 3,000 children in Germany found that the number of books in the home strongly predicted reading achievement — even after controlling for the parents’ education levels and income. And a massive, longitudinal study examining the educational attainment of 70,000 students from 27 countries found, surprisingly, that having lots of books in the home was as good a predictor of children’s educational attainment as parents’ education levels. In fact, access to books was more predictive than the father’s occupation or the family’s standard of living. The greatest impact of book access was seen among the least educated and poorest families

The Monica Bird, Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her... - StumbleUpon

The Monica Bird, Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her... - StumbleUpon:

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

The best and worst cities for unpaid internships : Bundle

The best and worst cities for unpaid internships : Bundle: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"


It's spring, which means college students from around the country are on the hunt for summer internships, many of which will be unpaid. Students shouldn't be putting themselves into debt to get work experience, which is why we set out to identify the best cities in the U.S. to get an unpaid internship based on low cost of living, and potential opportunities with Fortune 500 companies (rankings included).

We dove into our data and examined how much 18 to 24-year-olds earning less than $20,000 annually were spending on dining out, groceries, gas and entertainment each month in cities with internship opportunities. We also looked what students would pay in rent in those cities using data from real estate site hotpads.com. Here's what we found.

Carnival TV

Carnival TV: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Finally Trinidad Carnival 2011 in spectacular HD, online and free.

Loic Le Meur Blog: How You Can Start A Business With Passion

Loic Le Meur Blog: How You Can Start A Business With Passion: "Each edition of LeWeb inspires more participants to start a business and it is one of its main purposes. I am always getting many questions about how to start a business after LeWeb, years ago I had written a series of posts, 'create a company' that I should have continued, but instead of doing that I started other businesses. To help the few friends who are dying to start their businesses in 2009, here are some very quick thoughts that could help them get started. This is NOT a comprehensive post, just sharing a few top of mind ideas that I would tell you if you asked me how you should get started.

-just throw yourself in the water and swim, stop thinking. Most people I know hesitate too much to start, they think too much, just do it and learn as you go
-it is not where you start that matters, it is where you take it that matters, as Jason Calacanis says, not where you start
-stop waiting for the idea of your life, just focus on something easy to explain and that delivers a service people will like
-identify 'empty space' that is a service or product that does not exist or badly delivered by your future competitors
-remain in your area of expertise, it is generally what you have the most passion about and where you are the best
-do not spend months on the business plan, do something simple and start selling it as soon as possible, your business plan will be wrong anyway
-do not spend time on market research, it is useless. Just search the web for who is doing it or not, read blogs about it, search on twitter, etc
-got your idea? good, just start. Do not spend months writing it in details or doing the best powerpoint ever, it is pointless. Just write it in bullet point format.
-share it as much as you can to friends and other entrepreneurs, on your blog (start blogging if you don't) and get advice. They will only care about the bullet point, short executive summary.
-do not be afraid that anybody 'steals' your idea, there are hundreds of people who have the same idea right now and probably some already working on the same. If you do not do it, you will only have to complain when someone else has done it, and it will be useless as they will always say they had the idea before (and it will probably be true, maybe not, who cares).
-repeat after me 'ideas have no value, only execution matters'. When you are done repeat that again. -try to start without resources or if you can, raise some money with friends and family, do not go and spend time see VCs at start, especially in difficult times
-start building as soon as possible, don't wait. Ship anything you can, a simple website, even with bugs, call it alpha :)
-you are not a developer? go find one, you can either give him enough shares for him to be cofounder, or just go to elance find resources generally for not much. You can have an entire site done there very cheap
-once shipped, get friends and family using it and giving you feedback. Blog it, tweet it, share on Facebook, any means to get the initial community going is the best
-don't do marketing, do a better product first
-use a feedback tool such as uservoice or getsatisfaction and ask your community to give you feedback and vote on the most important features they want
-just deliver the most popular features your active users want and deliver often, don't try to make the perfect product, it will not happen.
-run as fast as you can as being transparent implies that competitors will also read your community feedback and often copy cool ideas, sometimes deliver them faster than you do
-once your product is ready enough, start selling something, find real customers. This does not mean it should become entirely paying, the community would not like that, rather ship a 'pro' more feature packed product, or start adding some non intrusive advertising but in recession times, do not count too much on advertising revenues...
-write a weekly or monthly newsletter, email marketing is far from being dead, use one of the tens of free tools around, make sure you let people unsusbcribe easily if they like, avoid spam.
-keep in touch with the community as much as you can with events (can be virtual events such as questions, challenges) every week or even every day
-keep improving the product regularly, do not let too much time in between two versions
-if you have some friends and family or better seed or VC money, 'hire slowly and fire fast' as you will read very often, it is always good advice. As tough as it can be, it is a question of survival, always make sure you 'have enough runway' ahead of you. If you don't, your team is too big.
-success takes time, give it the time it needs. LeWeb, my conference, took 5 years to gather nearly 2000 participants and establish its brand (that can even survive some logistical issues, or at least I think!) and I did not even think about it as a business when I started it
-don't think you will never be able to execute your idea with almost no means, there are solutions most of the times and great 'bootstrapped' companies are the living proof
-in the current tough market conditions when it is extremely tough to raise money with crappy valuations, the best is obviously to work on ideas that generate revenue as soon as possible.
-have passion about your business. Do not sleep much and focus only on your business. Do not do anything else, except taking some good two hours lunches from now and then.
-work like hell. Be always on. Know your space and focus focus focus.

Obvious? Yes. All the above is obvious. But you cannot imagine how many friends I know who never start because they do not follow the obvious. I forgot things? Of course, this is why there are thousands of books about entrepreneurship. I did not talk about human resource for example. I just tried to gather a few quick thoughts. I wish you all to start a business in 2009 and will be happy to help as much as I can, just keep in mind that I am very busy trying to make mine, Seesmic, a great success. Fortunately I have some runway ahead of me as the most 'new' and 'innovative' a product is, the longer it will take to find its use, but the more exciting it is! If you have any motivation issue, just watch Gary Vaynerchuk at LeWeb and you will 'just crush it'.

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Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

This article is causing a huge uproar online. I applaud her for writing about her parenting style. She sounds like a West Indian parent. No sleepovers, big deal. High expectations? More parents should set the bar that high for their kids. That's why the drop out rate is sky high. She took her kid's educatio...n into her own hands when she said she hated math. She created study sheets and drilled her till she got it. Maybe some of her methods were a little heavy handed but definitely not child abuse as some are claiming. Parents who make their kid athletes practice for hours on end at the expense of good grades are never criticized but she is vilified for expecting academic excellence from her kids, something many parents should require. She's courageous for writing about her parenting methods.

Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids? And what happens when they fight back?

By AMY CHUA

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

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Erin Patrice O'Brien for The Wall Street Journal

Amy Chua with her daughters, Louisa and Sophia, at their home in New Haven, Conn.

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

I'm using the term "Chinese mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.

Ideas Market

The Tiger Mother Responds to Readers

Ms. Chua answers questions from Journal readers who wrote in to the Ideas Market blog.

All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.

When it comes to parenting, the Chinese seem to produce children who display academic excellence, musical mastery and professional success - or so the stereotype goes. WSJ's Christina Tsuei speaks to two moms raised by Chinese immigrants who share what it was like growing up and how they hope to raise their children.

More Parenting Videos

Teaching Math to Spark Creative Thinking

Can Bilingualism Make Preschoolers Smarter?

Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job." Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.

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What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.

Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.

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Chua family

From Ms. Chua's album: 'Mean me with Lulu in hotel room... with score taped to TV!'

As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.

The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty—lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage.)

Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you." By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.

I've thought long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between the Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.

Chua family

Newborn Amy Chua in her mother's arms, a year after her parents arrived in the U.S.

First, I've noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.

For example, if a child comes home with an A-minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid," "worthless" or "a disgrace." Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principal to challenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.

If a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.

Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)

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Chua family

Sophia playing at Carnegie Hall in 2007.

Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it's probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children. (And it's true that Chinese mothers get in the trenches, putting in long grueling hours personally tutoring, training, interrogating and spying on their kids.) Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.

By contrast, I don't think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents. My husband, Jed, actually has the opposite view. "Children don't choose their parents," he once said to me. "They don't even choose to be born. It's parents who foist life on their kids, so it's the parents' responsibility to provide for them. Kids don't owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids." This strikes me as a terrible deal for the Western parent.

Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences. That's why Chinese daughters can't have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can't go to sleepaway camp. It's also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, "I got a part in the school play! I'm Villager Number Six. I'll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I'll also need a ride on weekends." God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.

Don't get me wrong: It's not that Chinese parents don't care about their children. Just the opposite. They would give up anything for their children. It's just an entirely different parenting model.

Read More

• A Cartoonist on Tiger Parenthood
• In China, Not All Practice Tough Love
• The Juggle: Are U.S. Parents Too Soft?

Here's a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-style. Lulu was about 7, still playing two instruments, and working on a piano piece called "The Little White Donkey" by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it's also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.

Lulu couldn't do it. We worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever we tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, Lulu announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off.

"Get back to the piano now," I ordered.

"You can't make me."

"Oh yes, I can."

Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

Jed took me aside. He told me to stop insulting Lulu—which I wasn't even doing, I was just motivating her—and that he didn't think threatening Lulu was helpful. Also, he said, maybe Lulu really just couldn't do the technique—perhaps she didn't have the coordination yet—had I considered that possibility?

"You just don't believe in her," I accused.

"That's ridiculous," Jed said scornfully. "Of course I do."

"Sophia could play the piece when she was this age."

"But Lulu and Sophia are different people," Jed pointed out.

"Oh no, not this," I said, rolling my eyes. "Everyone is special in their special own way," I mimicked sarcastically. "Even losers are special in their own special way. Well don't worry, you don't have to lift a finger. I'm willing to put in as long as it takes, and I'm happy to be the one hated. And you can be the one they adore because you make them pancakes and take them to Yankees games."

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• A Prison for Parents?
• Those Tough Chinese Moms

Write to: IdeasMarket@wsj.com.

I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn't let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.

Then, out of the blue, Lulu did it. Her hands suddenly came together—her right and left hands each doing their own imperturbable thing—just like that.

Lulu realized it the same time I did. I held my breath. She tried it tentatively again. Then she played it more confidently and faster, and still the rhythm held. A moment later, she was beaming.

"Mommy, look—it's easy!" After that, she wanted to play the piece over and over and wouldn't leave the piano. That night, she came to sleep in my bed, and we snuggled and hugged, cracking each other up. When she performed "The Little White Donkey" at a recital a few weeks later, parents came up to me and said, "What a perfect piece for Lulu—it's so spunky and so her."

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“ I am in disbelief after reading this article. ”

—James Post

Even Jed gave me credit for that one. Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.

There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids' true interests. For their part, many Chinese secretly believe that they care more about their children and are willing to sacrifice much more for them than Westerners, who seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly. I think it's a misunderstanding on both sides. All decent parents want to do what's best for their children. The Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that.

Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.

—Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School and author of "Day of Empire" and "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability." This essay is excerpted from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua, to be published Tuesday by the Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2011 by Amy Chua.

New Zodiac sign dates: Don't switch your horoscope yet

I am a Scorpio, always have been, always will be!!

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/blog-post/2011/01/new_zodiac_sign_dates_dont_swi.html

By Melissa Bell

So, you've spent your whole life happily smug in your star sign. You're a fish! Swimming in two directions! You're intuitive, imaginative, unworldly! And then today's Web is aflame with the news: You are not a Pisces. You are an Aquarius. Your star sign has been wrong your whole life. All along, you've been a freaking water carrier. This is not cool.

According to Parke Kunkle, a board member of the Minnesota Planetarium Society, cool or not, it's written in the stars. Star signs were created by ancient Babylonians some 2,000 years ago by tracking where the sun was in the sky each month. However, the moon's gravitational pull has slowly moved the Earth in its axis, creating about a one-month bump in the stars' alignment, reports the Minnesota Star Tribune. Now, during what we think as the month of Pisces, the sun is actually in the sign of Aries.

The new dates would therefore be:

Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16
Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11
Pisces: March 11-April 18
Aries: April 18-May 13
Taurus: May 13-June 21
Gemini: June 21-July 20
Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10
Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16
Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30
Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23
Scorpio: Nov. 23-Dec. 17
Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20

Is this the dawning of a new age of Aquarius? Well, Kunkle is an astronomer who is not too keen on the practice of astrology. When asked by telephone if the new star locations now require us all to switch our loyalty to a new sign, he demurred. "I can tell you what the science is, but I'm not going to tell you what your personality is based on the location of things."

Commentators have also responded to the initial article, saying the new location of the earth does not matter. One wrote, "Oh for heaven's sake (oops), how can people with Ph.D.s be so ignorant? Of course astrologers know about precession -- they've known since about 200 BC. Horoscopes always take it into account... Sheesh."

The commentator is correct that this is not new information. Live Science reported on the role of "precession" on astrology in 2007. Precession is the phenomenon of the moon causing the earth to "wobble" on its axis.

Other astrologists say the ancient system was merely a practice used as a helpful hint for diviners. Blogger Jamie on Darkstar Astrology writes, "It is the planets moving across the backdrop of the stars which influence our lives, not the planets moving through imagined 30 degree divisions on a piece of paper."

So all those hapless men and women who rushed out in college to get a scorpion tattooed on their back don't need to now rush to sign up for laser remover. If you're going to believe that all the people born on your birthday are imbued with certain traits similar to your own in some mystical, ancient manner, you might as well believe it does not matter where the stars are in the sky to begin with. On the flip side, if you've never liked your sign, here's your chance to switch.

Update: Well, strike that, you don't get to switch your sign. At least reader StarJack says so: "The stars are markers that drift, but our main points of reference are not directly the stars. They are the equinoxes (both spring and vernal) and the solstices which altogether make the four cardinal points of the zodiac which in turn determine the signs. The stars help us locate those points which define the SIGNS of the Zodiac which remain constant in relation to the equinox point. The CONSTELLATIONS do move about and we take that into consideration when locating planets."

Updated at 4:46 p.m.

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By Melissa Bell | January 13, 2011; 12:15 PM ET

Barnes & Noble enters textbook rental business: Should you use it?

No doubt inspired by the success of sites like Chegg.com and BookRenter.com, Barnes & Noble has entered the textbook rental fray.

In a press release, the company announced that "Barnes & Noble College has made the program easy for students, enabling them to rent their textbooks from the comfort of their dorm or home simply by logging into their campus bookstore's e-commerce site. They can also rent from their campus Barnes & Noble bookstore. This innovative rental program gives students the added flexibility of paying for their rentals using any form of tender, including campus debit cards and student financial aid."



Renting textbooks can be a good way for financially strapped students to manage cash flow: even when buying the book and then selling it at the end of the semester will result in a lower net cost than renting, renting requires less up-front cash.

Renting may be a smart option for brand new titles that are not yet available second-hand. Still, here are a couple alternatives to renting that will likely yield better results for students:

* Before you buy anything, email the professor and ask if it's OK to use an old edition of the textbook. For many classes, this will work just fine. . . and can save you literally 90% or more off of retail. For the fall semester of 2008, I bought an old edition of a legal studies textbook on Amazon.com for 1 cent -- saving 99.9759268%! For that class, the old book was every bit as useful as the new edition, but no one else in my class had thought to ask the professor whether it would work.
* Buy your books used on Half.com or Amazon, but never trade them back to the bookstore at the end of the semester. Sell them on Half.com yourself, cut out the middleman, and keep as much of the money for yourself as you can.

Zac Bissonnette's book College on a Dime will be published by Portfolio in the fall.