Update Announcements by Craig Stark 6 January 2014

Long time, no see. I've discovered that one of the difficulties of going solo now - producing content, coding, distributing email newsletters, etc. - is that it doesn't leave much room to get these things done if something else comes up. And two things came up in the latter half of this year - a month's-long project to add photos to every last book I had listed and an astonishingly busy holiday season - bookselling, that is. I'd like to think they are related, and I'll elaborate on this in the following article.

A few comments:

First, I'm giving advertising the boot. It will take some time to clean up the banners, but things should be looking like this page fairly soon:

Clean, simple - and devoted purely to bookselling.

If the opportunity arises to review something useful to booksellers, I will, and I'll continue to provide links to buy relevant books, items, etc., in articles for the sake of convenience.

Second, I gave some thought to how much time I could devote to BookThink this year, and two newsletters a month should be something I can manage. Look for The BookThinker on the first and third Monday's each month.

Finally, Chapter 14 of BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling is done and will be delivered to subscribers this week. This Guide is a comprehensive, in-progress bookselling how-to available by subscription here. It's approximately half completed, and new subscribers will receive current and all remaining chapters as they are issued. Note: If you subscribed to the Gold Edition (now re-titled BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling) in 2008 or earlier, you will need to purchase the guide to continue receiving chapters.

For those of you not familiar with the guide, a list of completed chapters may give you a better sense of what's going on:

1. Essential Book History for Booksellers

2. How Books Are Made

3. Why Bookselling?

4. How to Make Money Selling Books While You're Learning How to Sell Books: First Things First

5. How to Make Money Selling Books While You're Learning How to Sell Books: Closing the Gap on Your Competition

6. Trust: The Sine Qua Non of Bookselling

7. Getting Down to Business: Why Your ASP Will Make You or Break You

8. How to Identify First Editions: Books That Aren't, Part I

9. How to Identify First Editions: Books That Aren't, Part II

10. How to Identify First Editions: Books That Are, Part III

11. How to Identify First Editions: Books That Are, Part IV (The Essential Reference Library)

12. How to Buy Inventory: Part I, Building Hot Lists

13. How to Buy Inventory: Part II, Building Flashpoint Lists

14. How to Buy Inventory: Part III, An Introduction to Sourcing Inventory

BookThink's popular First Edition Library Checklist has been reformatted to PDF and now includes thumbnail photos of cover art for all FEL titles. The FEL, for those not familiar with it, is a series of extraordinarily faithful first edition facsimiles of over 100 notable publications, most of them issued with protective slipcases. Many are now out of print and all are enthusiastically collected. As booksellers, it pays for you to know of them and about them. Our checklist package includes a checklist of all 111 FEL titles, thumbnail images of cover art, indications of most and least valuable titles, indications of rarest and most common titles, detailed issue points (where applicable), explanatory notes, and the full text of Stan Shelley's superb, illustrated primer on the First Edition Library.

If you have purchased the earlier version (which was available in DOC and TXT formats), you can upgrade to the new version for $5. The price for first time buyers is $14.99. Either option can be exercised by clicking here.

BookThink's forum is up and running again. You can get to it by clicking this link.

Also, BookThink's complete Gold Edition is now available 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.

Click here to see several sample pages. (And yes, we're working on converting and updating 50/50 and QMR as well.)

Important: If you have previously purchased a complete Gold Edition package, this e-book is available to you at no charge. Email me at editor@bookthink.com for your copy. Also, if you have purchased any Gold Edition issues either singly or in groups at any time, we will subtract those purchases from the price of the e-book. Again, email me at editor@bookthink.com and we will research your purchases and forward a discounted invoice reflecting them.

Finally, the entire BookThink output of Gold Editions, 50/50's and QMR's is available to purchase as a complete package here. Again, if you have previously purchased any issues, we will subtract these from the total, and once you purchase them, you will be entitled to any future updates at no additional cost.