From The Editor by Craig Stark #126, 27 July 2008

It starts and stops with "From the Editor" today, and the topic is change. Effectively immediately, the free BookThinker weekly newsletter will return to its original twice-monthly format. The plan is to publish one regular BookThinker per month along with a monthly update presenting Pamela Palmer's "Top 10 on eBay," a few sneak previews of premium content, and likely some miscellaneous content. The BookThinker itself will feature expanded content - perhaps four to six feature articles instead of the present one or two. Another way to put this is that we'll be publishing essentially the same quality and quantity of content that we have been; it will just be distributed differently.

Look for the first Update next Sunday evening, August 3, and the first regular BookThinker, a special fall bookselling kickoff issue, on Sunday evening, August 24.

The reasons for making this change are several. First and foremost it will free up time for us to upgrade our premium newsletters. We've had many requests for formatting the Gold Edition and QMR in HTML or PDF, so this is now a high priority. Also, beginning in August, we will be publishing premium content (both back issues and current issues) in the Kindle format. Those of you who have Kindles, therefore, will be able to take them with you on scouting trips and have instant access to relevant information, in effect transforming the Kindle into a scouting book. Look for an article soon with suggestions for how to set up this innovative device to maximize its usefulness.

It's also my intention to resume publishing more regularly on BookThink's NewsBlog. Our News Editor, Karin Bergsagel, has done a remarkable job building this into one of our most popular features, and it simply makes sense to expand it.

Finally, I'll be spending more time in BookThink's forum. Given the economic challenges facing many of us, we anticipate many new entrants into bookselling in the coming year, and we're here to help. If you aren't already participating, we hereby extend an invitation to join. The registration process isn't totally painless in that it requires two steps - registration and staff approval - but the payoff is that you'll be able to participate in a safe, focused environment, optimal for learning the business.

Thanks everybody for your continued support of BookThink.

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