From the Editor by Craig Stark #12, 16 February 2004

Subscriptions to our email newsletter and site traffic have been growing steadily over the past five or so months, and while we're pleased with the progress we've made, we also think it's time to kick things up a notch and implement some changes we've been contemplating since this project was first conceived.

NOTE: Gold Edition replaced regular Premium Content on August 2, 2004. Learn how to subscribe.

One of these changes is the addition of premium content. By premium content I mean information that will, hopefully, translate directly into more money in your pocket. Insider information is another way to put it. A major component of our premium content will be lists of flashpoints. Today's BookThinker is devoted entirely to flashpoints - what they are, why they work, how to use them, and how to make productive lists of them. This introduction will serve as a basis for the premium content - our first list of flashpoints - that will appear next month.

Before I say anything else about this I want to assure you that BookThinker's premium content, for the foreseeable future, will not cost you a penny. Our intention is to build this site primarily (though not necessarily exclusively) on the basis of advertising.

To date we've used only affiliate advertising. Many of you have helped us offset our operating costs by clicking Google Ads (we're compensated for every user's click), searching for books on FetchBook, and purchasing books and other items by navigating through the BookShelf and BookSearch pages. For those of you who don't already know, a book purchased, for example, at Amazon will cost the same whether you arrive at the Amazon site directly or by way of one of BookThink's links. The difference is, if you start here and purchase it there, we get a cut; if you start there and make the same purchase, we get nothing. We appreciate any ongoing help you can give us.

Anyway, another of the changes that will soon be implemented is paid advertising. This will be critical, we think, to establishing a profitable website for both us and our users - and more importantly, keep things absolutely free for you. In order to effectively solicit advertisers, however, we need numbers to bring to the table, and one of these numbers is total subscriptions to the email newsletter. The higher the better.

Here's our proposal: beginning March 15, we'll begin publishing premium newsletter content in the email newsletter only. It will not appear in any form on the website, though we may archive here it at a later date with password access. In return we ask only that you subscribe to the BookThinker email newsletter, which can be accomplished in a few moments by typing your email address in the subscription box on the home page. If you're already a subscriber, you're done. You'll automatically begin receiving premium content, free of charge, on March 15. To repeat - there will be no charge whatsoever for this.

For more details on BookThinker subscriptions and premium content, please visit the BookThink's Subscriber's Page.

Thank you so much for the support you've already given BookThink and the BookThinker newsletter. We're looking forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship.