Ivan Mesa and Betsy Childs Howard, “On My Shelf: Life and Books with Betsy Childs Howard” (The Gospel Coalition)

“I encourage all pastors to regularly read Christian biographies for the good to their own souls. There is something about becoming immersed in someone else’s story and watching the outworking of God’s plan for his or her life that gives perspective on one’s own life. Something about your ministry that seems hard may start to look like a blessing when compared to the challenges others have faced! And reading about the answers God gave to someone else’s prayers may encourage you to pray for your own ministry with more boldness.”

Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, Jess Jiang, Willa Rubin, “BOOKstore Economics” (Planet Money)

“How do bookstores choose the books they stock, and how does that affect what customers read? It may not seem like it, but every shelf in a bookstore is a highly valuable and contested piece of commercial real estate. And for every new book that a bookstore decides to stock, there are thousands of others that did not make the cut. So how do bookstores make those decisions? And how will the Planet Money book fare under the discerning eyes of the booksellers, the final gatekeepers in the long gauntlet of the publishing industry?”

The previous episodes in this series of podcasts promoting the new Planet Money book have also been intriguing for book lovers:

Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, Jess Jiang, Willa Rubin, “Our BOOK vs. the Global Supply Chain” (Planet Money)

Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, Jess Jiang, Willa Rubin, “Inside a BOOK Auction” (Planet Money)

Joel Miller, “No, Books Are Not Remotely Too Expensive” (Miller’s Book Review)

“When you hear people say books cost too much money and demand that publishers cut their prices, where are they supposed to cut it from? Some years the only reason publishers are profitable at all is because of layoffs and other creative restructuring—a recurring risk when you run that lean to begin with. Grocery stores can afford to play close to the line because everyone needs groceries every week. But when the market’s wobbly, it’s very easy to put off buying a book. If buyers get frugal a couple months in a row, suddenly the publisher is in the red.”

Mark Pearson, “A Boom of Independent Bookstores, Just When We Need Them Most” (Los Angeles Times)

“But what’s becoming all the more clear and important is how these stores are building these third spaces in the shadow of giant tech companies — especially Amazon. Shopping at an independent bookstore has, for many, become a form of protest.”