Update Announcements by Craig Stark 21 May 2014

A late start this month. I've been hard at work on an upcoming two-part Author Report. As mentioned at the outset of this series, some of these reports will feature topics other than authors. In this case, it's a publisher. For most of us, it's not long into bookselling before we encounter difficulties with the notorious "reprint" house Grosset & Dunlap, not only because dating Grosset & Dunlap publications is so often a guessing game but also because not all of their publications were reprints - not, in fact, by a long shot. This report will attempt to sort things out in detail. Look for a preview in the next issue of the BookThinker.

Children's picturebook collector Stan Zielinski contributes our feature article today - an insightful search analysis of the first 50 Newbery Award winning books. Stan is the author of an excellent guide on this genre - Children's Picturebook Price Guide: Finding, Assessing & Collecting Contemporary Illustrated Books.

Due to the popularity of the "kitchen sink" sale I've decided to hold it over and give it a spot in BookThink's Store. Here's the deal: You get everything for $179.99, subscriptions to BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling and BookThink's Author Reports along with all complete report packages - all Gold Editions, all 50/50's and all Quarterly Market Reports - and any revisions/updates to these reports as they are completed. The subscriptions include all current chapters and reports and additional chapters and reports as they are issued. This is a ton of bookselling content that, if applied, will pay for itself quickly and generate income for years to come. Click here to purchase it, and everything will be emailed to you as attachments within 24 hours.

Note to subscribers: Chapter 15 of BookThink's Guide to Online Bookselling has been delivered. If you didn't receive your copy, please check your spam folder first. If it's not there, email me at editor@bookthink.com and I'll send it to you ASAP. 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:

1. Essential Book History for Booksellers

2. How Books Are Made

3. Why Bookselling?

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

6. Trust: The Sine Qua Non of Bookselling

7. Getting Down to Business: Why Your ASP Will Make You or Break You

8. How to Identify First Editions: Books That Aren't, Part I

9. How to Identify First Editions: Books That Aren't, Part II

10. How to Identify First Editions: Books That Are, Part III

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

12. How to Buy Inventory: Part I, Building Hot Lists

13. How to Buy Inventory: Part II, Building Flashpoint Lists

14. How to Buy Inventory: Part III, An Introduction to Sourcing Inventory

15. How to Buy Inventory: Part IV, An eBay Buying Tutorial

Purchase a subscription here.

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.