Update Announcements by Craig Stark #8, 29 December 2003

Book Grading - a slippery slope if there ever was one, and with the arrival of tens of thousands of new (and inexperienced) online booksellers every year, it only gets slipperier and slipperier. Is there any hope for a standardized, universal grading system? Probably not in the immediate future, but forces are at work on the fringes of bookselling that may dramatically alter how we'll grade books, or get them graded by a third party, in the future. Today's Update article, "Book Grading for Dummies or Mummies?" takes on this issue with a look at the Comics Guaranty Company, a fast-growing grading service for comic books that effectively mummifies them along the way.

As we approach the end of our fourth month at BookThinker as well as the end of 2003, we'd like to thank you, one and all, for your support of both the website and the newsletter and wish you all the best for the new year. See you in 2004!