Update Announcements by Craig Stark #140, 4 January 2010

Sometime soon I plan to scare some of you with a few things that will, hopefully, convince you to stop reacting to market conditions and start anticipating them. Reactions aren't always fast enough anymore; things are changing too quickly; by the time you react, often it's already too late because the correction no longer works.

In the meantime, I'm going to forge ahead with identifying what I've termed "insulated niches" - specific print book areas that in my opinion will likely not be adversely impacted by the digital revolution. Today's insulated niche is signed hypermoderns.

A brief comment on a smoke odor remover that has created something of a buzz - Banish. This is an unscented, water-based product that one lightly mists on clothing or whatever to remove recently-acquired smoke odor that has been taken on, say, in a bar. The manufacturer makes no claims about the efficacy of this on items that have more or less entrenched smoke odor, but the mad scientist in me simply had to try it out on a book. My experiment involved very lightly spraying the leaves in half a book, fanning it for a few minutes to initiate drying, and putting it under a weight overnight to prevent wrinkling. A non-starter, I'm afraid; it had absolutely no noticeable effect. Anyway, here's hoping that this saves you a few bucks.

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