From the Editor by Craig Stark #4, 20 October 2003

If you haven't seen the forum announcement, received an email notice, or visited the home page recently, you may have missed last week's launch of the BookThinker Update. This is a shorter version of the regular newsletter and will be published on the second and fourth Mondays of each month (and on fifth Mondays when applicable). Since the BookThinker newsletter is already published on the first and third Mondays, this means that new material will now appear every week.

The Update will focus primarily on topics of interest to booksellers, and the articles themselves will typically be more narrowly focused than those appearing in the regular newsletter. For this reason - and also because we think that most of us already get more email than we need - we won't be distributing the BookThinker Update by email to our general subscribers. However, if there's enough reader interest, we're open to changing this policy to suit. Possibilities include maintaining separate subscriber lists for each newsletter, sending out email notices one day in advance of website launch, or, if the vast majority of readers agree, simply sending everything to the entire subscriber list. Please email us with your opinion, and we'll go from there.

Our series on book photography continues today with a discussion of what to take pictures of. There's much more to this than tossing a book on a scanner bed - or we think there should be. Focusing on carefully chosen elements of a book, both inside and out, and including them in your presentations can make a big difference in sales.

Expanding this theme, BookThink reviews noted photographer Abelard Morell's a book of books, an extraordinary collection of photographs of books that will open your eyes to books as objects in ways you may have not thought possible.

Finally, in Letters to the Editor, two thoughtful and articulate readers offer different perspectives on the topic of first editions.

BookThink welcomes your opinions, pro or con, on its newsletters or site content. Ultimately, we'd like this website to be a product of shared contributions from those who care deeply about books.