Update Announcements, #99, 23 July 2007

A few changes afoot today. Subscribers to the email version of the BookThinker will notice that we've upgraded to an HTML format. Full-version text newsletters have been increasingly unwieldy of late, often exceeding 6,000 or 7,000 words in length, and we badly needed to streamline things.

The new format will consist of the full versions of these deathless intros from yours truly, the Editor, including detailed blurbs of articles appearing in the issue. Excerpts from articles will follow with links for clicking into the website versions, along with author photos. For those of you who print the BookThinker, there will be links for clicking into printer-friendly versions of all articles. Also, if for any reason your email host won't display the HTML version properly, a text version will be automatically displayed - and this can be printed out as well. As always, your feedback on this change is welcome.

On to today's business. Contributing Editor Jill Hendrix recently completed a series on how to write a business plan for a clicks-and-bricks used bookstore. If this seemed like an onerous undertaking to you, you may think that the next step - naming your business - would be by contrast both easy and fun. Well, of course, it could be, but it you trot through this step quickly and merrily, will you end up with a name that will power your business both today and in the future? Not likely. There are very important matters to consider here for open shop and online booksellers alike. Jill discusses them in detail in her article, "Naming Your Business."

Part II of Ephemera Editor Michele Behan's series on anthologies appears today. This time she looks at that perennial collectible, The Story of Little Black Sambo, and how it can spell profits for otherwise ho-hum anthologies that contain the story. Along the way, there's plenty of historical background on Bannerman's classic and commentary on the ethics of marketing Black Americana.

Finally - and speaking of things onerous - I'm pleased to announce that bookseller Judy Lanskey has taken over BookThinkwon's links page and, in the coming months, will augment it with links to new and improved resources. No doubt some of you have noticed the growing cobwebs; many links we put in place a year or so back are no longer viable. Actually, were; Judy has updated all of these, and the links page is once again a thriving collection of living links. Also, she'll soon begin her first project - compiling links to first edition identification resources. If you have any suggestions, please email her at lolajy@aol.com. We're confident that the best books links page online will soon be much better.

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Contact the editor, Craig Stark
editor@bookthink.com