BookThinker Newsletter #22, July 5, 2004

BookThink provides resources for online and open shop book dealers, book collectors, and serious readers. Resources already in place or scheduled to be added in the coming months include first edition designations and issue points for 1,000’s of publishers; detailed and illustrated book terminology; a moderated book forum; an extensive library of active and pertinent book-related links; reviews of books about books; and tutorials on practical book repair, grading, buying for resale, selling books online and off, building a personal collection, and more.

Update Announcements
Special thanks go out to all of you who subscribed to the new Gold Edition BookThinker and purchased individual back issues. The response was great. If you haven't subscribed yet, our special charter subscription rate of $10 annually is good through July 31, 2004. More details are here.

Profits in Public Domain Publications
Marketing Angles You Might Not Have Thought Of
In good times, the tendency is to specialize; in bad, to diversify. If you've been selling books exclusively and have fallen on hard times - and I'm hearing that some of you have - it's possible that you've given some thought to selling other things as well to compensate for a loss of income. Or perhaps you already are doing this. But diversification doesn't have to mean getting out of the books biz. There are things you can do with books that are, well, different than things you've been doing. Today I'm going to talk about several bookselling angles that might not have occurred to you.

From the Editor

Arts & Crafts in America
A World Class Niche
There are very few broad niches that can be categorized as hot, but one bright exception is the Arts & Crafts movement in America. It's hot now; it's been hot for years. What's all the fuss about? Find out in today's BookThinker.

BookThink's Premium Content
Super Niche
Profiting From the Arts & Crafts Movement
Books, periodicals, catalogs, ephemera, etc. No doubt some or all of the following flashpoints will sound a familiar note: Stickley, bungalow, Roseville, kit houses, Roycroft, Alladin Readi-Cut, mission furniture, Prairie Style, Tiffany, quarter-sawn oak, Louis Sullivan, etc. Arts & Crafts generated - one and all. There are 100's more, many of which appear in today's Premium Content.

Previous BookThinker Update -

Kim Stanley Robinson
Good Things Come in Threes
Tim Doyle surveys the major works of powerhouse Science Fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson in today’s BookThinker Update – and, while he’s at it, reminds us why we’re in this crazy business in the first place.

Organizing Books for Pleasure and Profit
BookThink history columnist Alison Lake takes a detailed look at how book collectors and booksellers organize their books. Interestingly enough, Dewey Decimal System originator Melvil Dewey has next to nothing to do with it!

What's Hot and What's Not in Encyclopedias
As a frequent reader of book forums, I've noticed that encyclopedias often appear, along with microwave cookbooks, on lists of things to avoid purchasing for resale - unless, perhaps, they are still in shrink wrap and at least warm to the touch off the press. In bookselling, however, it seems that no matter what book or grouping of books is tagged with the loser label, there are inevitably exceptions. I frankly don't know if near-legendary, quirky microwave oven inventor Percy L. Spencer ever signed a microwave cookbook, but if he did, you and I know that it has significant value. To scientists and inventors, that is. Not cooks. Encyclopedias, as a group, are populated with far more exceptions than our treasured m.c.'s, so many, in fact, that they frequently reward savvy booksellers with profits in three figures. Today's Premium Content gets specific on what to look for.

NOTE: Gold Edition will be introduced August 2, 2004. Learn how to subscribe.

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