Special Announcements

by Craig Stark

3 Febraury 2014

For many of us, book club editions, with few exceptions, don't figure into things. Sure, we might grab the occasional BCE of The Old Man and the Sea, Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird, perhaps a few others, but it falls off pretty quickly after that. The money just isn't there, right? But perhaps it doesn't have to fall off quite so quickly. There may be more opportunities out there than you think. Recall issue #53 of the Gold Edition - 133 Book Club Editions That Are Actually Worth Something. They actually are, and this isn't a complete list either. Today's feature article offers some additional examples that don't appear in this issue.

For those of you who missed the first announcement, I'm offering a free sample HTML template that can be used to list books on eBay from The Art of Books - a much quicker, simpler task than listing on eBay directly. This template allows up to six photos, and its border design, color scheme, etc., can be easily modified to suit your situation. It's based as closely as possible, given a few AOB wrinkles, on the standard cataloguing format in use for many years by most antiquarian booksellers - but again, this can be easily modified as well to something you're more comfortable with. Email me at editor@bookthink.com to receive a free copy of the coding, and click here for a short tutorial.

By way of jump-starting 2014 at BookThink, I'm going to run a short sale - I guess you could call it a kitchen sink sale. Here's the offer: $179.99 buys you everything BookThink has produced from day one, now extending to ten years plus. This includes all back issues of the Gold Edition, 50/50 and the Quarterly Market Report as well as subscriptions to BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling and BookThink's Bookseller's Author Reports. The latter subscriptions will also include all Guide chapters and Author Reports issued to date, along will all future chapters and reports as they are issued. Also, any updates to 50/50 and QMR will be made available to you at no additional charge as they are completed. To take advantage of this offer, email me at editor@bookthink.com and I'll forward an invoice. For those of you who already have part of the shooting match but want to complete things, email me, and I'll adjust things down from the sale price depending on what you have purchased in the past. This sale begins today and will end midnight next week, January 27, 2014.

Chapter 14 of BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling was delivered to subscribers last week. This Guide is a comprehensive, in-progress bookselling how-to available by subscription here. 14 chapters have been completed, and new subscribers will receive current and all remaining chapters as they are issued. Note: If you subscribed to the Gold Edition (now re-titled BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling) in 2009 or earlier, you will need to purchase the guide to continue receiving chapters.

For those of you not familiar with the guide, a list of completed chapters may give you a better sense of what's going on:

4. How to Make Money Selling Books While You're Learning How to Sell Books: First Things First

5. How to Make Money Selling Books While You're Learning How to Sell Books: Closing the Gap on Your Competition

11. How to Identify First Editions: Books That Are, Part IV (The Essential Reference Library)

BookThink's popular First Edition Library Checklist has been reformatted to PDF and now includes thumbnail photos of cover art for all FEL titles. The FEL, for those not familiar with it, is a series of extraordinarily faithful first edition facsimiles of over 100 notable publications, most of them issued with protective slipcases. Many are now out of print and all are enthusiastically collected. As booksellers, it pays for you to know of them and about them. Our checklist package includes a checklist of all 111 FEL titles, thumbnail images of cover art, indications of most and least valuable titles, indications of rarest and most common titles, detailed issue points (where applicable), explanatory notes, and the full text of Stan Shelley's superb, illustrated primer on the First Edition Library.

If you have purchased the earlier version (which was available in DOC and TXT formats), you can upgrade to the new version for $5. The price for first time buyers is $14.99. Either option can be exercised by clicking here.

BookThink's forum is up and running again. You can get to it by clicking here.

Also, BookThink's complete Gold Edition is now available in PDF format. All 59 Gold Editions have been recently updated (and in some cases expanded) and combined into a PDF format e-book. A table of contents presents clickable report titles, and the entire document is searchable by keywords. The PDF format ensures 100% compatibility with all computers, tablets and smartphones, and it's easier than ever to take the Gold Edition with you on scouting trips. Purchase it here for $59.99.

Click here to see several sample pages. (And yes, we're working on converting and updating 50/50 and QMR as well.)

Important: If you have previously purchased a complete Gold Edition package, this e-book is available to you at no charge. Email me at editor@bookthink.com for your copy. Also, if you have purchased any Gold Edition issues either singly or in groups at any time, we will subtract those purchases from the price of the e-book. Again, email me at editor@bookthink.com and we will research your purchases and forward a discounted invoice reflecting them.

Finally, the entire BookThink output of Gold Editions, 50/50's and QMR's is available to purchase as a complete package here. Again, if you have previously purchased any issues, we will subtract these from the total, and once you purchase them, you will be entitled to any future updates at no additional cost.

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Questions or comments?
Contact the editor, Craig Stark
editor@bookthink.com