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GET YOUR FREE BOOKS

Earlier this year Amazon sparked a book price-war by upping its discount on NYT bestsellers. Last week, in just under two hours, Bol.com gave away 20,000 books at a cost of more than £100,000. In return, it got 40,000 book buyers to register their e-mail addresses, and lengthy articles in at least two national newspapers. In terms of marketing spend it was a cheap deal. How can internet booksellers afford to undercut their prices? Six online booksellers talk about their strategies. – The Bookseller

OWNERSHIP QUESTIONS

British report says some 300 works of art in UK museums have questionable WWII provenance and could have been stolen by Nazis from their rightful owners. – The Guardian

  • NAZI LOOT: British museums and galleries announce a list of art they hold that was looted by the Nazis and never returned to rightful owners. So will the art be returned? Not necessarily. “Arts Minister Alan Howarth told the BBC’s ‘Newsnight’ program: ‘Just as it was wrong to take paintings off Jewish people in the circumstances of the Nazi era, so it would be wrong without a proper basis of evidence to take paintings off the national collections which are held for the public benefit.'” – BBC

  • WHAT’S FAIR? “It is entirely proper that stolen pictures, especially those taken in the appalling circumstances of Europe under Nazi domination, should be returned to the families of their pre-war owners, but publishing lists of this kind invites false claims made, not with mischievous intentions, but through errors of recollection after 60 years or more – one Picasso looks much like another after so long a time. It is possible, even probable, that the list will provoke false memories, and once a false claim is made it may well be difficult for the gallery in question to prove or disprove the claim, leaving ownership in limbo.” – London Evening Standard

AND THEN THEY CAME FOR ME

“Should intellectuals push for a cultural embargo of Austria and try to starve the xenophobic rightists out? Or should they go to Austria and feed the vigorous internal opposition, which made itself apparent in a march of 250,000 protesters in Vienna this month? But such tactics could do a great deal of harm. “I can agree on a boycott on the highly official level,” says one critic and curator. But, referring to the Austrian Freedom Party’s crusade against contemporary art, he says, “it makes no sense to boycott us. We are already under attack inside Austria.” – Chronicle of Higher Education

CORPORATE SUPPORT

Sydney’s Olympic Arts Festival is doing well attracting corporate sponsors. But Australia’s Minister for the Arts says continued corporate support after the Olympics end is crucial to a healthy Australian arts scene. Currently corporations fund only about 10 percent of the country’s arts expenditures. – Sydney Morning Herald