The BookThinker Newsletter ISSN 1547-9501 140, 21 December 2009

#140, Special Report 2, 18 January 2010

Special Announcements

Bookselling in the 21st Century Part IX: Insulated Niches Sacred Books Question: Does the content of a book change if its format changes? At first glance, the question might seem ridiculous. How could the content of a book possibly change if you read it first, say, in print format and then on a Kindle? It's still comprised of exactly the same words, right?

#140, Update Announcements, 4 January 2010

Special Announcements

Bookselling in the 21st Century Part VIII: Insulated Niches Books Purchased for Decoration Think about this for a moment: What is the likelihood that the antiques market will go away during our lifetimes? Or even suffer a major decline? Slim to none, in my opinion, especially since "new" antiques are born every day. Easy. But ask the same question about the book market, and we might hesitate, qualify our answer, or even predict that it will head south in a big way. Maybe not so easy.

#140, Update Announcements, 4 January 2010

Update Announcements

Bookselling in the 21st Century Part VII: Insulated Niches Signed Hypermoderns Forging ahead today 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.

Recent BookThink Issues

The BookThinker, 140, 21 December 2009

From the Editor

Bookselling in the 21st Century Part VI: Insulated Niches An Introduction August through November has been one of my best bookselling stretches ever - a nice surprise, frankly, given that events seem to be conspiring to send many businesses south. I don't have a ready explanation for this surge in sales, but what I can do is look back at exactly what those sales were and perhaps make some guesses on trends. And wouldn't it be nice if I discovered that there are a few bookselling niches that appear to be nicely insulated against the forces that have been eroding our marketplace in recent years?

Condition Guidelines at Half.com Update I'm still getting reports of suspensions. If there's good news, in most cases reinstatements (when justified) are happening as well, though this doesn't mean it won't be a pain in the ass to get everything up and running again.

#139, Special Report 2, 14 December 2009

Special Announcements

Condition Guidelines Beware of the Grinch! There have been major, unannounced changes to half.com's condition guidelines, such that a careful bookseller's listings will now require special attention at half.com. If you describe all your books as "Excellent customer service, thousands of happy people," you've got nothing to worry about, but if you describe your books with greater care, you will need to be very cautious.

Top 10 on eBay October 2009 If you guessed The Lost Symbol was in the Fiction Top 10, you'd be right - 5 times. Dan Brown's latest novel took half the places on the list. He was joined by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ayn Rand, Cormac McCarthy, John Steinbeck, and Erle Stanley Gardner. The non-fiction list ranged from Ninja Submission to the 3-volume Handbook of Iron Meteorites. But most surprising was the appearance of two eBay store items. BookThink hasn't noticed store items on earlier lists, so it may have been more common than we think. Wouldn't you be surprised, though, if one of the books in your eBay store made the list?

#139, Special Report 1, 30 November 2009

Special Announcements

Basic Cataloguing Something challenging for you today. Bookseller Joseph Maraglino - some of you may know him as fine.books or "Joe" on the eBay bookseller's forum - has granted us permission to publish his guide to basic cataloguing. Though this has been in place in a slightly different form for some time on the above forum, I felt that it would be useful to expose it to a broader audience because, let's face it, few booksellers bother to catalog their books at all. Of course, one can argue that not all books need cataloguing, but I invite you to suspend this argument for the time being, read this guide closely, several times if necessary, and ponder its implications for your future in bookselling - especially in light of what's going on in the current marketplace.

#139, Update Announcements, 23 November 2009

Update Announcements

Bookselling in the 21st Century Part V: How to Liquidate Books Liquidating portions of your inventory doesn't need to be an act of desperation. It can be a necessary, rational response to the marketplace - and often profitable. In Part V of our series, Bookselling in the 21st Century, we offer strategies for getting this done.

From the Editor

J.M. Dent Books in Series Three New Checklists for Booksellers and Collectors I'm pleased to announce that Everyman's Library collector Terry Seymour has compiled three new checklists of J.M. Dent series books - Mediaeval Towns, Dent's Double (and Treble) Volumes and Children's Illustrated Classics. All are now available as a package from BookThink for $9.99. Click here to purchase, and read his introduction to the checklists in our first article.

Scanning with Apple's IPhone 3G Now It Works! Second in this issue is my review of a recently launched iPhone application that mimics a tool many of you depend heavily on - a laser scanner. Though not a laser scanner as such, RedLaser is the first iPhone app that accurately recognizes bar codes and delivers search results in under 10 seconds. At $1.99, what's not to like?

Recent BookThinker Issues