From the Editor by Craig Stark #155, 11 April 2011

First, a few news items. If you missed BookThink News Editor Karin Bergsagel's review of FBAScout for iPhones/iPads a few weeks ago, you can check it out here. So far, this is the only i-app available that returns FBA results along with Amazon Marketplace pricing and ranking. If you're an FBA seller, it's essential to know what other FBA sellers are doing; if you're not, it's still important because you're competing against FBA sellers in any case. I test drove the app last week - it's now available to the public - and was especially impressed with how quickly results are returned once the camera recognizes a bar code. In the blink of an eye, in fact. FBAScout is free for the first 50 scans (after which a data subscription will apply) and also available for Android phones. Here's an FBAScout screen shot of colleague Stan Zielinski's excellent guide to children's picturebooks:

(Look for Part III of Stan's series on the Top 100 children's picturebooks to resume next week.)

Also, I heard from Katharine Leab at American Book Prices Current recently, and she alerted me to a service I wasn't aware of - something they call "Individual Questions Cheerfully Answered." If you have a book in hand that you're having difficulty evaluating and don't have access to ABPC, post your question here, and they'll give you the answer you would have found by consulting this resource yourself. Absolutely no charge, but she does request that you limit your inquiries to one book at a time. And learn more about ABPC here.

Finally, Media Editor Catherine Petruccione returns today with an interview with bookseller Grant Jerkins - oh, and did I mention that he just happens to be a novelist as well? His recently published crime novel, A Very Simple Crime, has received favorable reviews in both The New York Times and The Washington Post, and I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more of him on bookshelves everywhere. Larry McMurtry here we come! By the way, Grant offers booksellers some insightful perspectives.

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