The BookThinker Newsletter ISSN 1547-9501 #162, 8 May 2012

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 ....

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 ....

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" ....

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 ....

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 ....

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 ....

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 ...

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 ...

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.

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 ....

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.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

Closing the Gap: Using a Tablet for Scouting: Part II An iPad or any other tablet is useful for scouting only to the extent that it's set up to maximize the delivery of relevant information. I addressed hardware setup in Part I. Now let's look at software ...

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?

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

BookThink's Bookseller's Author Reports: Irma Rombauer Today's feature article is an abridgement of the complete Irma Rombauer (Joy of Cooking) report, minus the marketing analysis and bibliography. It may be purchased next week. Previously published Author Reports may be purchased here.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

"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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Special Announcements

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 ...

Update Announcements

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 ...

From the Editor

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.

Special Announcements

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 ...

Special Announcements

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.

Update Announcements

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 ...

From the Editor

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 ...

Special Announcements

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.

Special Announcements

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.

Update Announcements

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.

#156, 9 May 2011

From the Editor

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.

Special Announcements

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!

Update Announcements

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.

11 April 2011

From the Editor

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.

154, 4 April 2011

Special Announcements

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.

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.

#154 March 11, 2011

Special Announcements

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.

Update Announcements

The Top 100 Collectible Children's Books Introduction and the Marquis 25 A series of articles to select the Top 100 Collectible American Picturebooks, providing the rationale for each book's inclusion, with an objective of providing readers with the context for valuing first editions within the genre.

From the Editor

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.

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.

Special Announcements

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.

The BookThinker, Special Report 1, 7 February 2011

Special Announcements

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.

1 February 2011

Update Announcements

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).

#152, 3 January 2010

From the Editor

Selling on Amazon The $275 Amazon Gift Card Magically Turned into a $2500 Book Or, Using Amazon and Other Book Buyback Sites To Supplement Your Online Bookselling Income 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.

#153 17 January 2010

From the Editor

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.

#152, 3 January 2010

From the Editor

Selling on Amazon The $275 Amazon Gift Card Magically Turned into a $2500 Book Or, Using Amazon and Other Book Buyback Sites To Supplement Your Online Bookselling Income 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.

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

From the Editor

BookThink's Bookseller's Author Reports Ayn Rand When Slate reported George Wills writing that "Since Obama was sworn in, more than 600,000 copies of [Atlas Shrugged] had been sold," they focused an author of value to booksellers.

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.