by Pamela Palmer #47, 11 July, 2005

You don't need a big startup budget to build a useful book reference library. Buying a few titles at a time works well. But you do need to know the right titles to meet your immediate goals. BookThink can help. We review the options and recommends top choices for you to consider. So, whether you need to identify a modern first editions, know the salient points for a 19th century title, or track down prime book hunting venues in a distant state, this is the place to start.

Building a Bookselling Reference Library Part I: First Edition Identification If your bookselling reference library is outdated, inadequate or non-existent, it's high time to upgrade, and the most productive place to start is with first edition identification guides. There are lots of them out there, some good, some bad, some cheap, some expensive. BookThink looks at the best of them, discusses in detail what they are and what they are not, and offers some budget friendly recommendations.

Building a Bookselling Reference Library Part II: Talking the Bookselling Talk This is something you may not have heard before: the smaller your bookselling vocabulary is, the less successful you'll be as a bookseller - that is, the less money you'll make. Not so? Well, read today's feature article, and you may change your mind.

Building a Bookselling Reference Library Part III: Price Guides and How to Use Them Today, in our continuing series on Building a Bookselling Reference Library, I'm going to look at price guides. This will be a different approach than you've perhaps seen before because I don't use my guides for pricing. I use them for mining flashpoints. There's a step-by-step method to it, and I'll explain it in today's Update.

Building a Bookselling Reference Library Part IV: Online Resources - Questia BookThink's multi-part series, "How to Build a Bookselling Reference Library," continues today with a look at Questia - a massive online library of books, journals, magazines and newspapers that's instantly searchable and accessible 24/7. Is this your ticket to taking bookselling to the next level? Find out here.

Book Review Antique Trader Book Collector's Price Guide Looking for an up to date reference guide to book values and book collecting? Krause’s Antique Trader’s Book Collector’s Guide may be the answer. The BookThinker reviews it in detail.

BookThink Review Used Book Lover's Guides Whether you're a bookseller looking for inventory, a collector, or simply a book lover, David & Susan Siegel's "Used Book Lover's Guides" may be the treasure map to things you otherwise never would have found. A complete review of the online and print versions of these popular guides appears here.

Misnamed Books An Interview with Allen and Pat Ahearn Allen and Pat Ahearn's Collected Books: The Guide to Values is one of the most useful first edition identification guides available to booksellers and collectors. The Ahearns are longtime booksellers (and collectors) themselves and have devoted decades to researching the information contained in the guide. BookThink interviews the Ahearns in today's newsletter.

BookThink's BookShelf Browse titles and short reviews on BookThink BookShelf, where you'll see Amazon prices and links for ordering titles you want to buy.