Special Announcements by Craig Stark 19 March 2012

Apologies for not being clear about the Gold Edition sale that's been running for the past two weeks. A number of you have asked if multiple purchases could be made, as in buy-two-get-four-free. Or more. Though this was originally conceived as a means for introducing the Gold Edition to new readers, sure, go for it. No limit. And I'll extend the sale one more week so you can take advantage of it. Buy one or more Gold Edition reports at the regular price of $5 and receive two free reports for each.

Here's where you get it done.

One more clarification: Any BookThink purchase of Gold Edition, 50/50 or QMR reports can be credited toward the purchase of one of our complete reports packages. Example: If you've purchased, say, $50 worth of reports in the past, you can apply this towards the purchase of a package. A Gold Edition + 50/50 package is $99.99, so your cost would be $99.99 - $50 = $49.99. If you want to take advantage of this, email me at editor@bookthink.com, we'll research your past purchases and issue a special invoice.

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 take a ca. 1870's jacketless book in hand and describe it as "no dust jacket, as issued" because you assume that dust jackets are a 20th century phenomenon, you'll recall from this article that nearly all major publishers were regularly issuing dust jackets as early as the 1870's.