From the Editor by Craig Stark 23 January 2012

There are many knowledgeable booksellers who are ready and willing to teach new or less experienced booksellers a thing or two, sometimes many things - and most of us take advantage of these opportunities. But we booksellers also learn much from collectors; in fact, it's often collectors who are the most generous sharing what they know. Moreover, collectors often author the best reference books, perhaps because their passion for what they collect inspires them to lavish as much attention on writing about their collections as they do on the collections themselves. Such is certainly the case with Everyman's Library collector Terry Seymour. In 2005, Terry published what has now been established as the standard reference on EL - A Guide to Collecting Everyman's Library. However, a bibliographer's work is never done, and for the past six years Terry has been working on a new EL resource. Originally conceived as an update to the guide, it evolved into an entirely new effort that features a comprehensive EL printing history. Find out more in today's feature article.

"Arbitrage" is a word that's often kicked around in bookselling circles. Essentially, it refers to the activity of buying products in one venue and immediately selling them for profit in another. In one sense, nearly all bookselling is arbitrage. If you buy most of your inventory at local sales, for example, and resell it online for profit, by definition this is arbitrage. But more often we use the word to refer to a more demanding activity - say, purchasing books on eBay and reselling them on Amazon. Or, more broadly, purchasing products at local retail outlets and reselling them on Amazon via Amazon's FBA program. It may be more demanding in the sense that is requires more knowledge to succeed at consistently, but many sellers do succeed.

If you're new to this species of arbitrage, there are resources that can help your cause. I'll mention three, two of which are BookThink resources. (Click links for more information.)

BookHunt

How to Buy Inventory Online

Finally, Retail Arbitrage, a comprehensive, idea-packed guide published by FBAScout's Chris Green, gives you much of the know-how you'll need to purchase products locally, often from retail outlets, and resell them online for profit through Amazon's FBA program. I highly recommend it. Buy it here:

Happy hunting!