History of the Bookmark Dictionary

Two great references gave me the idea for the Bookmark Dictionary:

  1. An IBM 370 Assembler Instruction Reference Pocket Book, affectionately called the "yellow book". At about 40 pages, 3 by 7 inches, it was portable, essential and efficient. Downright cute.
  2. A spiral notebook full of words I compiled to study vocabulary for various tests like the SAT and GRE. After the tests, I used this as a dictionary but it became messy as I added words.

So after a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup epiphany, I put these two portable reference tools together and out came the first edition of the Bookmark Dictionary.

I thought the bookmark dictionary might sell in a bookstore, with the novelty items at the cash register. I made little wooden display boxes and asked around in the local bookstores to see what they thought. Most took me up on the idea and I sold close to 500 over a year or so. Other marketing ideas included selling them by the gross to others to give away as promos. Book clubs, book stores, Amazon.com might be interested. I never pursued anything other than the sales in local stores.

But producing the books was too much work. I kept the dictionary in a Microsoft Word document and when I added definitions, the whole document had to change to keep the headings in place. (For any Word programmers out there, I know, there must be a way to program Word to simplify that process.) Cutting and pasting and photocopying and 5am trips to Kinko's weighed in, (I put together 5 editions), and I abandoned the project.

Finally, I got the time and had the interest to webify distribution. I wrote a program that accepts a simple list of words in alphabetical order and spits out the printable Bookmark Dictionary web page. Now adding a word takes just seconds and the burden of printing is distributed to each of you. (Of course, I don't make any money, but then, I never did.) Take 10 minutes or so to print it out. It's worth it. People love this thing.