From The Editor by Craig Stark #113, 28 January 2008

Though written in the pre-Internet era, Dale L. Gilbert's Complete Guide to Starting a Used Bookstore: Old Books into Gold has for years been the gold-standard how-to for starting an open-shop used bookstore. It seems that there are indeed principles involved in the process, and many of these are comparatively timeless. Not long ago, Gilbert's book could put money in the pocket of online booksellers too, often to the tune of $50 or $100. Prices are down somewhat now, perhaps because open-shop start-ups are down, but it's still worth picking up for resale - and reading it before it goes out the door. By the way, anybody who's interested in snagging a copy to research this topic, can find one in our eBay Editor's Picks on the home page.

BookThink has its own bookstore guru in the form of Jill Hendrix, who's been quietly authoring an extraordinarily detailed and useful guide to starting a clicks-and-bricks used bookstore for some months now, "clicks-and-bricks," of course, referring to a bookselling business that operates both on the ground and online. If my count is correct, today's article, which discusses store location and lease negotiation, represents the tenth installment in her series. I highly recommend these articles for online booksellers too.

Also, Pamela Palmer presents October's Top 10 on eBay. Her summary: "Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous titles dominated the October non-fiction list, filling half the slots, while Harry Potter took 3 places on the fiction list. The big news, though, came from the Antiquarian & Collectible Top 5 where a 3' 50 lb. heavyweight came in at #1 after garnering 41 bids and $25,655." If you're interested in finding out just what that huge heavyweight was, you'll need to subscribe to our free mailing list to get the item number. Email me at editor@bookthink.com to get started..

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