Hello again, Chaz.  Your test and data indicates that BookMacster preferences are to Launch in Background but not Show Status Menu, and this explains the problem.  Please do this to fix it…

• Quit BookMacster if it is "running" (in Activity Monitor, etc.)  (You'll have to do this in Activity Monitor or use ⌥⌘ escape).
• Run the following command in Terminal…

    defaults delete com.sheepsystems.BookMacster launchInBackground

• Launch BookMacster and it should show like a regular app.

* * *

Yes, obviously Launch in Background without Show Status Menu is a non-starter.  And I thought BookMacster made it impossible to do that, because the Launch in Background checkbox is disabled unless Show Status Menu is checked on, and these are both off by default.  But, apparently, you did it somehow.  We'll either re-think that, or else add a brute-force consistency check in the next version of BookMacster.

Thank you for your persistence, and let me know if you have any more trouble.

chaz1397 wrote on Nov 21^st, 2012 at 10:45pm:
We should be able to fix this.  Does BookMacster's icon show along the top edge of your screen (menu bar), near the right?

Please launch the application Terminal.app which is in /Applications/Utilities.  A window will open.  Copy and paste this command into it…

defaults read com.sheepsystems.BookMacster launchInBackground

then hit return.

What does it say?  The possibilities are:

A.  The domain/default pair of (/Users/jk/Library/Preferences/com.sheepsystems.BookMacster, launchInBackground) does not exist

B.  0.
C.  1.

chaz1397 wrote on Nov 21^st, 2012 at 10:45pm:
The next step would be to download and run our Trouble Zipper, and send me the data it produces.  There might be an answer in your console logs.  A little info is here…

http://www.sheepsystems.com/support/send_data/

To skip the info, we have a direct download link…

http://sheepsystems.com/files/SSYTroubleZipper.zip

Finally, there's also the old standby solution of reinstalling and re-downloading.  Sometimes zip or dmg archives don't decompress all of the pieces.

chaz1397 wrote on Nov 21^st, 2012 at 10:45pm:
I was using the latest version of Bookmacster downloaded form your website but only the 3-day trial. [/quote]You can get two more 3-day trials after the first one expires.

chaz1397 wrote on Nov 21^st, 2012 at 10:45pm:
Ah, we give a free license to any new user who sends us data that we use to identify a bug.

Thank you.

Hello, Chaz.

Thank you for the report.  Please try this.

• Look on the right side of your menubar, to the left of the clock, etc.
• Do you see the BookMacster icon?

If so, skip the next step

• Do you see any space between the left side of the menubar (words) and the right side of the menubar (icons).  If not, launch an application which has a short menu bar.  TextEdit is a good choice.

• If you see the BookMacster icon in the left of the menubar, click it and "Show BookMacster".
• Reactivate some other application.  (This is to work around a long-standing bug in Mac OS X.)
• BookMacster should be in your Dock and ⌘-tab application switcher now.  Activate it.

If you see BookMacster's menu now, the proble is that you'd inadvertently switched on the Launch in Background preference.  This happens to me once in a while when I import a user's preference.  Usually takes about 5 minutes of head-scratching before I realize why!

BookMacster's Launch in Background really means it.  If you want to change it, click in the menu BookMacster ▸ Preferences, then the General tab.

Let me know if this does not resolve the issue.