From The Editor by Craig Stark #78, 25 September 2006

Like so many other business endeavors, bookselling has its share of phenomena. Take Frank Herbert's Dune. First published in book form in 1965, Dune was both critically acclaimed and an immediate publishing success. What makes this success phenomenal is that, 41 years later, Dune is still a perennial best seller. Understandably, first printings are intensely collectible now, but so are early printings and book club editions. Science Fiction Editor Tim Doyle analyzes this phenomenon in today's BookThinker and also explains why almost nobody knows about Herbert's 17 other books.

History Editor Bill Klimon also appears today, this time to discuss a bookselling niche I bet most of you have never dipped a toe in - the Middle Ages. No, not selling books published in the Middle Ages; books about the Middle Ages. If you know some of the players and some of the rules, you can profit nicely.

Finally, issue #31 of the Gold Edition will be delivered tomorrow evening. The topic is buying and selling school yearbooks. With the able assistance of yearbook guru Seth Poppel, we've produced what I think is an unusually valuable guide to making consistent and easy money in this niche. With yearbooks, there's no need to fuss with issue points, and just about anything you pick up is salable, so if you're new to bookselling, this would be a great time to purchase a subscription and profit from it almost immediately.

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