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BookThink is the #1 ranked resource provider for online and open shop book dealers,
book collectors, and serious readers. Resources include:
- The BookThinker, a free twice monthly newsletter covering a wide range of bookselling and collecting topics.
- BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling, an in-progress master guide to 21st century online bookselling with new chapters issued monthly.
- BookThink's Bookseller's Author Reports,
detailed monthly reports featuring authors who consistently deliver the best profits for booksellers.
- Moderated book forums;
an extensive library of active and pertinent
book-related links;
book reviews; interviews with authors and other notables; and intensive tutorials on practical book repair, grading, terminology, buying for resale, selling books online and off, building a personal book collection, and more.
The BookThinker Newsletter ISSN 1547-9501
#162, 8 May 2012
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From the Editor
One of the later chapters in BookThink's in-progress Guide to Online Bookselling will discuss simple
techniques for book repair, and one of these techniques includes a method for straightening warped boards.
All that's needed are a few clamps and blocks of wood. Today's feature article - an excerpt from this
upcoming chapter - shows you how ....
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How to Straighten Warped Boards
One of the most commonly encountered condition issues booksellers face is warped boards.
Fortunately, it's also one of the easier problems to solve - as long as you can bring a few
simple items and some patience to the task ....
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Special Announcements
It seems to me, at times, that just about any bookselling question could legitimately be answered, "It depends."
It isn't just that there are so many exceptions to rules - though are there ever - it's also that it depends on who
is asking the question. That person is best met where they are, I believe, not where they aspire to go to or where you
think they should be, so, theoretically, every answer would necessarily be different in some respect. And such
is the case even with questions that seem to get asked over and over again. Read more in today's feature article,
"Top All-Time FAQ's" ....
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Top All-Time FAQ's
Patterns emerge over time. The same questions, mostly from those who aren't booksellers, come up again and again.
When it happens on forums, sometimes these questions are patiently answered, sometimes they are dismissed with
a suggestion to search the forum archives (because the question has been answered so many times before) - and
sometimes the replies aren't so nice ....
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Special Announcements
I may not make you any money this week, but I hope to give you some hope for the future of the
print-format book. There are many reasons, I believe, why print books will be collected for years
to come, but one fundamental reason became clear to me after reading a Heritage Press edition of W. Somerset Maugham's
The Moon and Sixpence ....
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Why (Some) Print Books Aren't Going Away
In recent years many arguments for and against the demise of print books have been advanced. Arguably, some
evidence for their demise is in: The growth of digitized books has exploded, after all, and many commodity booksellers
have experienced sharp downturns in sales. Still, the antiquarian book trade remains healthy. Some of us
believe that it will remain so indefinitely ....
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Update Announcements
Resuming BookThink's dust series today - Part IV: Design Considerations for Booksellers. If you haven't
already noticed, the purpose of this series isn't to present the entire dust jacket shooting match;
rather my focus is on dust jacket know-how that will impact your bookselling. Today this should be especially
evident because ...
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Dust Jackets: A Series (Part IV)
Dust jackets, in the two-panel / spine-panel / two-flap format they have evolved into, may seem simple enough
as objects go, but there are actually numerous design considerations that come into play, some of which apply directly
to what we as booksellers do. Take size. Well, it just needs to fit the book, right? Certainly in the top-to-bottom sense,
yes, though there have been instances when ...
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From the Editor
How to remove odors from books may not be the number one question booksellers ask, but surely it's in
the top ten. Ask it in a forum, and you'll get many different answers - baking soda, cat litter, Febreze, etc. -
and I've written here about the use of ozone generators. But sometimes Mother Nature can help the cause.
Find out how in today's article.
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Mother Nature's "Sun"
What's that line from the Beatle's "Mother Nature's Son"? "Swaying daisies, sing a lazy song beneath the sun."
Ah, now that the languorous days of summer are approaching, this might be a good time to discuss a method of
deodorizing books that I've had success with and in fact uses Mother Nature. This method takes advantage of a phenomenon
you might not be familiar with ....
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Special Announcements
Available now: BookThink's complete Gold Edition in PDF format. All 59 Gold Editions have been recently
updated (and in some cases expanded) and combined into a PDF format e-book. A table of contents presents
clickable report titles, and the entire document is searchable by keywords. The PDF format ensures 100%
compatibility with all computers, tablets and smartphones, and it's easier than ever to take the Gold Edition
with you on scouting trips. Purchase it Here for $59.99.
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Dust Jackets: A Series (Part III)
As noted in Part II, dust jackets are not a recent development in publishing, but their acceptance as
bibliographical components of books is. For this reason, bibliographers have not troubled themselves with
their description in bibliographies with much regularity until fairly recently. Given intense
collector interest ...
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Special Announcements
Our series on dust jackets continues today with a look at early dust jacket history. The primary
purpose of this article to offer some historical perspective: When were dust jackets first issued
with books, how prevalent were they and when, what were the more common forms they took, etc.? With
this perspective, the next time you feel the urge to ...
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Dust Jackets: A Series (Part II)
Things usually arise when a need for them arises, and this is as true of dust jackets as anything else.
The need for dust jackets arose with the introduction of permanent but less durable cloth bindings in
1820, and their first appearance, so far as we know, occurred a few years later. Prior to this publishers
issued books primarily as ...
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Update Announcements
Issue #6 of BookThink's Booksellers Author Reports, Irma Rombauer (The Joy of Cooking), was delivered
to subscribers last week. If you didn't get your copy, please contact me at editor@bookthink.com. You can subscribe
or purchase individual copies (PDF or print) here, and please
note that new subscribers will receive all reports published to date ...
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Dust Jackets: A Series (Part I)
I'm old enough to recall a time when it was common practice to toss out dust jackets - in fact, I
often practiced tossing them out myself. When I was teaching myself to write in the 1970's, I put together
a pretty substantial library of reference books, and the first thing I did when I acquired a new book
was to yank the dust jacket off ...
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From the Editor
As I mentioned in a recent newsletter, we've been reformatting our 59 Gold Edition reports
to the PDF format. This ensures 100% compatibility with all computers, tablets and smartphones.
During this process, I've also revised and in some cases supplemented the reports with new content ...
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How to Buy and Sell Foreign Books
If you sell books written in only one language, you will effectively eliminate the majority of this
planet's books from your pool of potential inventory. Unless you can consistently acquire more quality
books in your native language than you know what to do with, therefore, it makes sense to at least
consider foreign language books when they become available for sale ...
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Special Report
I'm sure all of you who have been in the bookselling biz for a year or more have compiled
a mental list of what I call bread-and-butter books - those books that you not only encounter
often but also sell quickly for worthwhile profits. Most of these books won't climb into three
figures but many sell in the $30 to $50 range and provide a consistent source of income over time ...
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Prophetic Profits: The Most Visible Books Often Display the Least Visible Opportunities
If I were to ask you to name the third most popular poet ever - and I do mean ever - could you? I'll
make it easier for you and name the first two: Shakespeare (the Sonnets) and Lao-Tzu (Tao Te Ching). Need
more clues? This poet's most widely read book was first published in 1923, selling just over a thousand copies.
Today, 89 years later, many thousands of copies sell weekly ...
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Special Report
Today's feature article - an overview of iPad applications I've found useful for scouting - will
obsolesce quickly as new applications are inevitably developed, but if nothing else, this will at
least give you an idea of how close the tablet has come to replicating a desktop or laptop computer
in the field and, in turn, how much more powerful we can be as buyers at sales.
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Update Announcements
Technology marches on, and to some extent bookselling with it. I began my bookselling life carrying
a scouting book with me, and this almost seems quaint now, given the breathtaking capabilities of today's
smartphones. The march of technology has steadily headed toward faster and smaller. Faster is always
better, but is smaller?
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Closing the Gap: Using a Tablet for Scouting: Part I
Not so long ago, in what now seems like the dark ages of online bookselling, most of us who were starting out as
booksellers were flying blind. Unless you had deep experience in the trade or had compiled a comprehensive scouting
book, there were no resources to help us to make buying decisions in the field. More often than not we were left
to our instincts, and mistakes were inevitably made ...
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From the Editor
There are many knowledgeable booksellers who are ready and willing to teach new or
less experienced booksellers a thing or two, sometimes many things - and most of us
take advantage of these opportunities. But we booksellers also learn much from collectors;
in fact, it's often collectors who are the most generous sharing what they know.
Moreover, collectors often author the best reference books ...
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A Printing History of Everyman's Library 1906-1982: A Review
Collectors often author the best reference books, perhaps because their passion for what they collect
inspires them to lavish as much attention on writing about their collections as they do on the collections themselves.
Such is certainly the case with Everyman's Library collector Terry Seymour ...
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Special Announcements
I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Books that have remained in print over many
decades can teach us a great deal about bookselling. Typically, they exist in multiple
editions with a wide variety of bindings - and often with continuously revised and expanded
(not to mention translated) content ...
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Special Announcements
Happy New Year all! Feeling energized about bookselling? I am. I'm also looking forward to doing whatever I can to
help your bookselling cause during the coming year. We'll continue to publish regular newsletters with just that in mind -
click here to subscribe to The BookThinker free - and progress continues on BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling ...
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A Review of C. Edgar Grissom's Ernest Hemingway: A Descriptive Bibliography
For decades Audre Hanneman's Ernest Hemingway: A Comprehensive Bibliography has served as the standard bibliographic
reference for Ernest Hemingway, but as most of us know, bibliographies are perpetual works in progress. Hanneman herself
published a 393-page supplement to her own bibliography a brief eight years after its release ...
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Update Announcements
The lowly book club edition ain't always so lowly. Here are some reasons why from Chapter 9
of BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling: First, some BCE's are in fact the first appearance (sometimes
the only appearance) of a title in print - that is, the actual first edition, first printing, first you-name-it.
Though not common, coming across this exception can make your day. Example: The First Edition Society of the
Franklin Library has published dozens of limited first editions ...
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Historical Notes on Book Club Editions
In BookThink's early years there was a running joke, primarily in our forums and entirely
at my expense, that I held and treasured a massive collection of microwave cookbooks. My own
fault, no doubt, because I often pointed out in articles that there was perhaps no class of
books that was more ubiquitous - or more consistently worthless. I suppose similar sport could
be had with another class of "worthless" books - book club editions ...
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"The Secret" of Bookselling
New Thought is all the rage now. In publishing, manifestations of it are ubiquitous - Bruce
Wilkinson's Prayer of Jabez, Rhonda Byrne's The Secret, to name but two of many fabulously
successful books. And prosperity ministries are popping up everywhere, perhaps none more
conspicuously than Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church, packed to the rafters of Houston's
Compaq Center each week ...
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Special Announcements
The recent death of Apple founder Steve Jobs has had an impact that can be measured
in many ways, some obvious, some perhaps not so obvious. For booksellers, the death of
any so-called VIP has positive impact measured in dollars and cents. On eBay, publications
featuring Jobs, especially early in his career - Macworld, Time Magazine, Wired, etc. -
are enjoying strong sales, as we would expect. Not so obvious, perhaps, a publication
that at first glance seems to have no connection to Jobs whatsoever - Stewart Brand's
The Whole Earth Catalog, published primarily in the late 1960's and early 1970's with
occasional reprises until the 1990's ...
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Dean Marshall Revisited
It doesn't seem like five years have passed since we featured children's author
Clara Deane Marshall (aka, Dean Marshall), who delighted a primarily juvenile female readership
with her books some fifty years ago. In my feature article I wrote ...
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The Long White Mystery
For much of my childhood and well into my adult life I was burdened with the belief that,
if you could trust anything about books, it was that the bad stuff would eventually fall
away and only the good stuff would survive - and be far more conspicuous by virtue of its
survival. That's how it worked, sure enough, and examples were not hard to come by: Melville was ...
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The Long White Month
With the first reading, The Long White Month became my future. Every week my mother took me
to the Amory Public Library, housed in two small rooms of City Hall. Soon after graduating from
picture books, I ran across the sole Dean Marshall book in the place and checked it out. And
kept checking it out ...
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Little-Known Granby Author's Books Become Collector's Items
On a warm spring evening on May 22, 1994 the new owners of a cabin on Lake Basile in Granby, Connecticut were
sitting on their porch watching the highlights of the water soften into night. No moon, no lights reflecting off the
water, only shadows from which the occasional rustle of night creatures were heard. There was a calm quietness,
like nature awaiting a storm, when suddenly, "What in the world was that?" An apparition ...
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Packaging Books for Pennies
Have you been hearing more calls lately? Recession calls, that is? The latest and
perhaps most unequivocal call for a double-dip recession arrived last week from the
Economic Cycle Research Institute. The ECRI has its critics, and some dispute its asserted
perfect track record for predicting recessions and avoiding false alarms, but it's
difficult to dispute Lakshman Achuthan's conviction ...
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The Red Book
Years ago, in the process of paying for books at a sale, an estate sale liquidator told me,
"You know, I can never figure out what books you're going to buy. You always surprise me."
To my mind, this was one of the highest compliments anybody ever paid me because it pointed
to one thing - specialized knowledge. It's fine and dandy to have and act upon your good instincts
when scouting for inventory ...
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Buying Book Collections 101: IIIb
In the last installment of this series, I talked about what to expect when you actually go on the house call.
I discussed my philosophy on coming up with an offer price, focusing on a collection where you have a good idea
of the resale value of the books. I also covered some of the factors that could influence your decision to buy or pass;
for instance, the ratio of good books to trash in the collection, and how much work would be involved
in dealing with the trash.
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Push On, Hit Hard, Follow Through
Chapter 7 of bookseller H.P. Kraus's autobiography, A Rare Book Saga, is titled, "I Was a Survivor."
And indeed he was. In the late 1930s Kraus survived not one but two notorious Nazi concentration camps -
Dachau and Buchenwald, which combined to produce nearly 100,000 deaths during WWII. That he was
Jewish made this all the more remarkable. As you might suspect, it's a painful chapter ...
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Buying Book Collections 101: IIIa
I recently received an email with the intriguing subject line "Wish to sell 400-500 SF books." The gentleman described
himself as a longtime collector and stated that most of the books were first editions and printed from 1960 through 1990.
The location of the books was approximately a two-hour round trip for me. While the email was quite brief and to the point,
there was a lot there to interest me.
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Object Lessons in the Book Trade
Some of you may recall an early BookThink article offering advice for shopping at FOL sales -
"The Stillness of Trout: How to Shop FOL sales." Funny thing, I haven't attended an
FOL sale since I wrote that article over seven years ago, but this month I was reminded of
it several times in several competitive situations. The first situation involved a widely
advertised estate sale featuring a library which was comprised in part of Easton Press books ...
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A Resolution for Booksellers Along With an Interview with Thatcher Vine of Juniper Books
Be remarkable. For the past month, I have been carrying around the collected works of Seth Godin, my favorite author on all things marketing related. In 1999,
Godin coined the term "Permission Marketing" in his breakthrough text for e-commerce entrepreneurs. The book revolves around the idea that you should turn
customers into friends and then develop relationships with those friends which, will eventually generate repeat sales, assuming you are able to create a Purple Cow ...
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BookThink's
Top 10 on eBay
May 2011
The May 2011 fiction top 10 features Tolkien, Grisham, Trollope, Faulkner, Burroughs, King, Fleming, and Gibson, along with 2 copies of A Game of Thrones. Of these, 3
sold as Best Offers, 1 sold as a BIN, and 6 were auctions. In the non-fiction category, there were 4 Best Offers, 2 BINs, and 4 auctions. The Antiquarian & Collectible category was diverse with Karl Marx's Capital sitting aside Oscar Wilde's poetry, Theodore Roosevelt's game hunting in Africa,
Mirour for Magistrates, and Winnie the Pooh.
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A Brief History of Publishers' Weekly
and Why It Matters to Booksellers
Publishers' Weekly (now Publishers Weekly) commenced publication in 1872, a whopping 139 years ago, and despite a recent shake up or two, still cranks out 51 issues annually. PW was originally conceived as a "catalogue" for publisher's to announce upcoming publications to booksellers (and otherwise draw attention to them). In the summer of 1874 at a publisher's convention in Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie, PW was established as the official organ of the book trade, and from that point forward it gradually expanded its content to include general book trade news and many related features.
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MediaScouter's Pocket Profit
for Android
Recently I was offered an opportunity to test drive Pocket Profit, an Android scouting application developed by
MediaScouter, a popular book scouting service. To note - my Android phone is a Motorola Droid X. I bought it late last year, and it was a nice upgrade with a larger screen and faster processor than my previous Droid phone. For my own scouting I have been mainly using the Android Amazon application, along with a few other barcode scanner applications. The Amazon application is the fastest I've tried and generates the most helpful information for selling books. It pulls up the individual sellers and their descriptions (or lack there of) and gives me insight on whether or not I can take advantage of writing a better description (as pointed out by our esteemed editor in a recent issue of BookThink) compared to the other sellers, and therefore pull in a higher profit. I often sell books on average about $3 more and many times even higher with an exceptional description.
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#156, 9 May 2011
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BookThink's Top 10 on eBay
April 2011
Special limited editions have long appeared in all three top 10 categories. In April 2011, though, the Antiquarian and Collectible list contained an unusual three signed limited
editions. From the Taschen Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made to Lady Chatterley's Lover issued in a privately printed signed
edition prior to the first trade publication to Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own the titles range from 1928 to 2009.
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Building a Bookselling Reference Library
How to "Photograph" Books with Words
Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings 1830-1880
In the recently published
Chapter 6 of BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling, I suggested that inexperienced booksellers study catalogs of mid- and upper-tier auction houses to accelerate the process of learning how to describe books. The better catalogs are accompanied by clear, color illustrations, and by referring back and forth between these illustrations and their textual descriptions, one can start to learn not only how to describe a book's condition but also its important physical elements - each with terminology that will suggest that you know something about books. And the latter is important because it establishes trust between you and potential buyers and, more importantly, allows you to ask for and achieve good prices. In turn, if you can achieve good prices, you can compete more favorably in the marketplace for inventory - pay better prices for it, that is. And so it goes until you wake up one day and realize that you've figured out how to make money at this!
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BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling
Chapter 6:
Trust, The Sine Qua Non of Bookselling
When I first started selling books, I took frequent road trips and looked for inventory in, among other places, used bookstores. Most bookstores weren't selling online then, and there were many opportunities for arbitrage. I recall visiting a Tampa, Florida bookstore one day - it was nineteenninetysomething - I found a few local history books, and I took them up to the counter to pay for them. I don't recall how we got on the topic, but I quietly mentioned something to the proprietor about having bought some books online. Well, this mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll suddenly transmogrified into a monstrous Mr. Hyde, and I stood amazed at the subsequent tirade that went on for minutes, not moments.
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11 April 2011
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A Very Simple Crime
An Interview with Grant Jerkins
Crime isn't pretty. If you need a light mystery romp or a hero with a magnetic personality,
this novel may not be for you. If you like crisp writing that moves along swiftly and prefer unvarnished reality when dealing with life's seamy side, you'll find it to be an enticing page-turner. The reader of A Very Simple Crime is immediately swept into a world of dysfunctional personalities.
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154, 4 April 2011
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The Accidental Antiquarian
An Interview with Kevin Johnson of Royal Books
Kevin Johnson, proprietor of Royal Books, became a bookseller in 1997 and specializes in Modern Literature, Cinema, Art, and Photography. In 2007,
Oak Knoll Press published his first book, The Dark Page, a full-color guide to the first edition sources for American film noir of the 1940s, followed in
2009 by The Dark Page II, a second volume covering 1950-1965. Kevin has been a member of the ABAA since 2002 and is on the faculty of the Colorado
Antiquarian Book Seminar.
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BookThink's Top 10 on eBay
March 2011
Stephen King dominated the Fiction Top 10 with 3 entries among titles by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, McCarthy, Koontz, Rand and Howard. The nonfiction list was
populated by the mix of Warhol, the Bible, Jimmy Page, and Edward Lear with Picasso and George Harrison thrown in. Tolkien held 2 places on the Antiquarian and Collectible list. The other spots were held by titles dating from 1476 to 1790.
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#154 March 11, 2011
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The Top 100 Collectible Children's Books
Nearly No Brainers
In the previous article the Marquis 25 was selected - the top 25 collectible American picturebooks. Although some might argue whether a book or two belongs in this list, most would agree that all belong in the Top 100 Collectible American Picturebooks. The next logical step is selecting the books that almost made the Marquis 25 - what I call the "Nearly No Brainers." These have many of the qualities of the Marquis 25 but by comparison do not have all the necessary credentials.
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The World Book Market
at Seven (and Counting)
The
World Book Market, a bookselling cooperative, was founded in 2004 by a small group of booksellers, among them Aussie bookseller Guy Weller, known to many online booksellers as "Mr. Pickwick in Oz." In seven years, WBM has grown to over 80 members worldwide. Previously, its powerful,
bookseller-designed database application was available to members only, but that will change beginning February 28, when it will be publicly offered as freeware.
To learn more about this tool as well as WBM, I recently interviewed Guy.
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BookThink's Top 10 on eBay
December 2011
In December, the top 10 fiction category included authors ranging from Jane Austen to Neil Gaiman. In addition, regulars such as Fleming, O'Connor, Pynchon,
and Meyer made appearances. Coming in at #1 in the non-fiction group was Gen. Carl von Clausewitz 3-volume set On War, made particularly special because it
came from the library of T.E. Lawrence. A 1935 Japanese karate book came in second, followed by an unredacted copy of Dark Heart, the Taschen
publication Kate Moss, and 4 late-19th century volumes on chess, among others.
The Antiquarian and Collectible list was dominated by US sellers and contained both Best Offer and auction sales. Picasso, Wilfred Owen, Seigfried Sassoon, and Mark Twain
were included in the top 5.
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The Accidental Antiquarian
Educational Programs for Booksellers
I didn't discover antiquarian bookselling or consider it a viable career option until I was well into my 30s. Had I known the world of antiquarian books even existed prior to then, I would have found a way to major in it in college.
Fortunately for me and for those of you who want to learn more about antiquarian books and bookselling, there are several educational programs available which can improve your level of expertise.
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The BookThinker, Special Report 1, 7 February 2011
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BookThink's Bookseller's Author Reports
Ian Fleming
Blofeld: I had heard that you were dead.
Bond: This is my second life.
Blofeld: You only live twice, Mr. Bond.
And so goes the exchange between super-agent James Bond and super-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld - a mid-century Holmes and Moriarty pairing that powered multiple
books and films in Ian Fleming's James Bond canon. It could be said that Fleming himself lived twice, once as a WWII British Naval Intelligence Officer, the architect
of both Operation Mincemeat and Operation Goldeneye, and once again, imaginatively, as James Bond himself, in 14 now-classic spy novels and story collections.
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1 February 2011
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DIKW and the Survival of Printed Books
A Bibliophile's Considered Opinion
I am a bibliophile: I love books. Most of you - I think I know BookThink's audience pretty well by now - also love books. We share this gladly. As bibliophiles, we are concerned about the survival of the printed book, not only because its departure, immediate or by attrition, will negatively impact our chosen profession of bookselling, but also because printed books enrich our lives broadly and profoundly in a manner that Google results can never.
But it isn't always easy to articulate why. The Digital Revolution has inspired much conversation about this, but most of it has been and remains focused
on the interaction with books as physical objects - the feel of them in our hands, their aesthetic beauty as objets d'arte on a shelf, or perhaps the quiet, deeply receptive experience of reading text illuminated by reflected light, an experience that cannot possibly be replicated by the direct-lit assault from a blaring, pulsating computer monitor or e-reader (though Kindles have taken a first step to mitigate this).
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#152, 3 January 2010
#153 17 January 2010
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Built-In Trust
The Amazon FBA Program
Is It Time to Make the Move?
Yes, I'm late to the party. Fulfillment by Amazon has been available to sellers for several years now, and I just got on board late last year. The FBA concept is simple: 3P sellers bulk ship their books or other items to one of Amazon's warehouses, and when something sells, Amazon packs and ships it. Couldn't be easier. What this does is expose your inventory to market segments you previously had no (or indirect) access to - namely, customers who use Amazon Prime, Super Saver Shipping, not to mention Gift Wrapping. It also enhances your position in search, and most important of all, provides built-in trust. Customers who otherwise might be reluctant to purchase items from 3P sellers are not at all reluctant to pull the trigger under the Amazon umbrella. Fees are somewhat higher and apply to both sales and monthly storage, but in my limited experience these are more than offset by increasing my prices, which I can get away with because of the above competitive advantages. Also, I realize significant savings on shipping by taking advantage of UPS deeply-discounted rates to bulk ship to Amazon warehouses.
The information I'm going to share with you has the potential to harm your business. The bright side is that, when used properly, it also has the
potential to help supplement your online bookselling income.
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#152, 3 January 2010
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Top 10 on eBay
November 2010
In the leadup to Christmas, eBay fiction top 10 was led by a signed 1st edition of Suttree. The Cormac McCarthy volume was way ahead of the pack, selling for more than double
the sale price of #2. Others on the list ranged from a signed Conrad title to a 1922 Clement Woods book. The non-fiction list was headed by a signed limited edition of Paul
McCartney's Blackbird Singing, followed by Easton Press' Long Walk to Freedom and a 1982 title by a college professor who believed the US government was taking
control of her mind; the book was self published.
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 :
#151, 6 December 2010
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Pretty Little Things
An Interview with Jilliane Hoffman
In this fast-moving novel Jilliane Hoffman paints a frighteningly real picture of the vast playground the internet provides for sexual predators and the vulnerable teens and children they target. Thirteen year old Lainey Emerson has gone missing, and FDLE Special Agent Bobby Dees is on the case. Head of the Department's Crimes Against Children Squad in Miami for more than a decade, Dees is haunted by the unsolved disappearance of his own daughter throughout the investigation, leading him alternately through a maze of hope and despair. It's a high-pitched suspense, skillfully written in a totally engrossing (but not gross) style of this difficult subject matter that will have you riveted to the pages of this book from start to finish.
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First Edition Guides: General
- 20th Century First Edition Fiction: A Price and Identification Guide
2008 Edition, Thomas Lee
Buy it at
BookThink
- American First Editions, Merle Johnson, revised and enlarged by Jacob Blanck (Fourth Edition)
Buy it at
Abebooks
or Amazon
- Author Price Guides, Allen and Patricia Ahearn (4 vols.; also available for individual authors; also issued as complete set on CD; 174 authors to date. Note: Some issued in looseleaf binder so determine contents before buying.)
Buy it at
Amazon - vol. 1, 1990
or
Amazon - vol. 2, 1998
or
Abebooks
- A Bibliographical Introduction to Seventy-Five Modern American Authors, Gary M. Lepper
Buy it at
Abebooks
or
Amazon
- Bibliography of American Literature, Jacob Blanck (9 Volumes)
Buy it at
Abebooks
or
Amazon
- Bibliotheca Americana: Dictionary of Books Relating to America From its Discovery to the Present Time, Joseph Sabin (29 Volumes or 2-Volume Microprint)
Buy it at
Abebooks
or
Amazon
- The Book Collector's Handbook of Values, Van Allen Bradley (1982-1983 Edition)
Buy it at
Abebooks
or
Amazon
- Collected Books, Allen and Patricia Ahearn
Buy it at
Abebooks
or
Amazon
- First Editions: A Guide to Identification, Edward N. Zempel and Linda A. Verkler
Buy it at
Abebooks
or
Amazon
- First Printings of American Authors, Matthew J. Bruccoli (5 Volumes)
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Abebooks
or
Amazon
- Guide to First Edition Prices 2008/9, R.B. Russell
Buy it at
Abebooks
or
Amazon
- Modern British Authors, B.D. Cutler and Villa Stiles
Buy it at
Abebooks
or
Amazon
- Modern First Editions: Points and Values, Gilbert H. Fabes and William A. Foyle (First, Second and Third Series)
Buy it at
Abebooks
or
Amazon
- Pocket Guide to the Identification of First Editions, Bill McBride
Buy it at
Abebooks
or
Amazon
- Points of Issue: A Compendium of Points of Issue of Books by 19th - 20th Century Authors, Bill McBride
Buy it at
Abebooks
or
Amazon
- Wright Howes: The Final Edition (of U.S.iana)
Buy it at
Abebooks
or
Amazon
Other Books
- The Performing Arts: A Guide to the Reference Literature
Buy it at
Amazon
- My Name in Books : A Guide to Character Names in Children's Literature
Buy it at
Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Make Mine a Mystery: A Reader's Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction
Buy it at
Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Introduction to Bibliography and Reference Work
Buy it at
Amazon
or
Abebooks
- International Bibliography of Discographies
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Index to Black American Writers in Collective Biographies
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Graphic Novels: A Bibliographic Guide to Book-Length Comics
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Literature: A Genre Guide
Buy it at
Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Fine Arts: A Bibliographic Guide to Basic Reference Works, Histories, and Handbooks: Second Edition
Buy it at
Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Fantasy Authors: A Research Guide
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Abebooks
- Encyclopedic directory of ethnic newspapers and periodicals in the United States
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Applied and Decorative Arts: A Bibliographic Guide to Basic Reference Works, Histories, and Handbooks
Buy it at
Amazon
or
Abebooks
- American Popular Culture: A Guide to the Reference Literature
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Read the High Country: Guide to Western Books and Films
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
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- American Military History: A Guide to Reference and Information Sources
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Murder in Retrospect: A Selective Guide to Historical Mystery Fiction
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Children's Books About Religion
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- A Guide to Field Guides: Identifying the Natural History of North America
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction, Fifth Edition
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Children's Authors and Illustrators Too Good to Miss: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Christian Fiction: A Guide to the Genre
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- The Bookmark Book
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Fantasy Literature for Children and Young Adults: An Annotated Bibliography, Fourth Edition
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Reference Guide to Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- 100 Most Popular Picture Book Authors and Illustrators: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- The Newbery Companion: Booktalk and Related Materials for Newbery Medal and Honor Books
Buy it at
Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Reader's Adviser : Vol.1 The Best Reference Works, British Literature & American Literature
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Children's Book Award Handbook
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- The Entrepreneur's Information Sourcebook: Charting the Path to Small Business Success
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- 100 Most Popular African American Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies
Buy it at
Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Graphic Novels: A Genre Guide to Comic Books, Manga, and More
Buy it at
Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Quotation Index to Children's Literature
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Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Reference and Research Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction Second Edition
Buy it at
Amazon
or
Abebooks
- Fluent in Fantasy: A Guide to Reading Interests
Buy it at
Amazon
or
Abebooks
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