From the Editor by Craig Stark 5 December 2025

By Craig Stark

In my (I hope) humble requests for donations in the last issue to sustain BookThink and improve it, I want to thank all of you who graciously sent something our way. This absolutely will make a difference in future efforts. We've placed this banner ad in several places on the site get it done, if you are so moved, and here is a live example:

I would also like to request something else: Any ideas you have for what you would like us to do to make things better at BookThink are very sincerely sought. Some of you, for example, have requested that we reboot the forums. If there is enough interest in this, I'd be happy to make it happen. This will require, of course, some set up time but also your participation in posting - and especially several volunteer moderators. Please email me at editor@bookthink.com with your red hot suggestions! And a reminder: I'm always open to hearing from you on any topic. If you have a question that I can answer directly or by way of pointing to where you can find the answer, I'm more than willing to do it.

Today's feature article, Part III of "Where Love Has Gone: The Future of Bookselling?" appears today with the subtitle: "AI, On a Short Leash - for Now." Given eBay's recent journey into this, met with heavily criticized book descriptions, this might seem like a non-starter, but I've discovered a thing or two in experimenting with it that might interest you in a game-changing sense. WARNING: I've not ventured much in this direction before so it might require a re-reading. Apologies in advance!

A final observation. In my daily search for inventory myself there appears a group of books that pop up time and time again as misrepresented. Most often this involves an assertion that the copy one is offering is a first edition when it certainly is not. These are books that are familiar to most booksellers, seem to surface with almost daily regularity, and whose value as first editions is significant. My vote for the granddaddy of all misrepresented books is >>>

Gone With the Wind.

It's available in print version only here.

Identifying a "true" first GWTW (a first printing, that is), couldn't be easier. If "Set up and electrotyped, Published May, 1936" appears on the copyright page, you've nailed it. But mischief starts almost immediately in June and continues with twists and turns through multiple printings, months and years forward. Few books exhibit these complexities, and what makes this discussion important is that early and often not so early printings also have value, the earlier the better, not to mention that one of the June printings is a Book-of-the-Month edition that is identical to the trade edition in every last respect, including a priced dust jacket. How many booksellers even know this? If this sparks an interest in you, BookThink has published a detailed bibliography of this publishing mess that will guide you to clarity. This study includes bibliographic points of all printings through the 15th, a publishing background with biographic information on Margaret Mitchell, her signature variations, a marketing analysis, secondary material that will deliver profits, a discussion on the Book-of-the-Month's invisible participation from the very beginning and more - whatever I could think of to help you make more money off this book that sells and sells and sells.