From the Editor by Craig Stark #44, 30 May 2005

In a recent BookThinker article I discussed some coming attractions at BookThink, one of which was an article on how to build an effective eBay auction template. After giving it more thought, it occurred to me that it might be more useful to readers if I expanded this into a series of articles that addressed not only the design or shell of a presentation but its content as well. Both are vitally important for communicating information to your buyers, and either can sometimes make or break a sale, not to mention affect final values hugely. Part I of this new series - "What Your Buyer Needs to Know from You: Photographic Content" - appears today.

Also, Catherine Petruccione is back with Part II of her series on building a book website. This time, in addition to offering valuable suggestions for upgrading site content, she tackles some technical issues as well. Writing meta tags, submitting your site to search engines, and monitoring activity with a log analyzer may not be as much fun as creating eye-popping web pages, but they're necessary in any case for attracting traffic in meaningful numbers. Once again, Cathy makes the daunting undaunting and includes lots of links to additional sources of information.

Finally, if you've stopped by BookThink's home page recently, you may have noticed a small banner ad announcing bookselling consulting. Because of numerous requests from readers who are looking for 1-on-1 tutoring in online bookselling, this is something we've been pondering for some time. Well, the planning stage will be completed soon, and we're going to take the plunge into new territory this summer. This will work best, I think you'll agree, if we make this service affordable, flexible to fit your specific needs, and both extensive and intensive enough to make a significant difference in your bottom line. Initially, in expectation of having to smooth out the inevitable wrinkles, we'll only be able to work with a small group of sellers, but hopefully this won't be an issue for long. If you have any suggestions for specific things you'd like to see in this program, please write me at editor@bookthink.com. Look for more details soon.