From the Editor by Craig Stark #52, 19 September 2005

BookThink's Contributing Editor Pamela Palmer's "Top 10 on eBay" returns today with an interesting twist: several top sellers listed fiction in the non-fiction category and/or non-fiction in the fiction category. If nothing else, this suggests that most bidders for these titles were searching all of eBay, not browsing in specific categories. Surprised?

A few issues back I mentioned that I would be publishing more letters to the editor. Well, I received a lengthy one several weeks ago that I truly intended to publish, but before I knew it, the writer had expanded it into a how-to article on photographing thick books. And a good one at that. In any case, this also appears in today's BookThinker, and I'm happy to introduce you to eBay bookseller Chuck Haney - who, despite his Fred-less name, plays in a band called Dudes Named Fred. No doubt he'll explain this sometime.

Last week, after announcing a likely relocation to an unspecified state in the coming months, a number of forum members (no doubt with only the best intentions) responded with dire, sometimes near hysterical warnings of "problem" bookscouting areas across the fruited plain. What surprised me most about these wasn't so much where they were located but how darn many of them there were. Can it be? Anyway, now that I've crossed off over 40 states as potential candidates for productive scouting, I'm beginning to wonder if I should just stay put!