ABA Holds a 'Collegial Forum' in Seattle

On Thursday, March 18, ABA held a Booksellers Forum in Seattle in conjunction with the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) Spring Show, which ran from March 18 - 20, at the Hilton Hotel/Seattle Airport. Among the topics discussed at the forum were efforts to amend the USA Patriot Act, changes to the Book Sense 76, and bestseller reporting through Nielsen BookScan. ABA's CEO Avin Mark Domnitz and COO Oren Teicher moderated the forum with the help of ABA Board member Russ Lawrence of Chapter One Bookstore in Hamilton, Montana.

"It was nice to attend such a collegial forum," said Lawrence. "I certainly had the feeling that everyone was on the same team."

DeDe Teeters of Armchair Books in Port Orchard, Washington, described the forum as being "wonderful." She told BTW that she attended the Book Sense Gift Card presentation to give "moral support," since she's already a staunch supporter of plastic over paper. "I've had such a positive experience with gift cards that I want everyone in PNBA to join," she said. "I did learn some great ideas [about how to promote the cards]. One bookseller sent out 350 gift cards to his best customers. That's a great idea.

The format of changes to the Book Sense 76 was also discussed, said Teeters. "Booksellers gave suggestions about how to rework the fliers and everyone in the room seemed pleased with the idea to change from 76 [titles] to 20," she said.

Will Peters, manager of Annie Bloom's Books in Portland, Oregon, also reported on bookseller response to the proposed new list of bookseller recommendations. "We talked about the changes to Book Sense," Peters said. "People seemed happy. [The shorter list] is easy to market, the titles are changed in a more timely way -- every month rather than every two months. We'd have 20 featured titles with another 20 available [in a downloadable PDF], so we'd basically have the same number of titles for two months, but it'll be rearranged in a better way to market and promote them." (For a related story, click here.)

When the subject of the Patriot Act arose, Peters said, spontaneous applause erupted for support of the Campaign for Reader Privacy (CRP), a nationwide grassroots effort to restore safeguards for the privacy of bookstore and library records eliminated by Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. The centerpiece of CRP, which is sponsored by ABA, the American Library Association, and PEN American Center, is a petition drive that is being conducted in bookstores, libraries, and via the Web at www.readerprivacy.org.

Sharing bestseller data with publishers, as well as reporting to the Book Sense Bestseller Lists, through Nielsen BookScan was another topic broached at the forum. And, in one-on-one tutorials, Domnitz explained to booksellers how easy it is to report financial data to the 2004 ABACUS study.

Lawrence said the PNBA Spring Trade Show went well with happy reps taking numerous orders. He said he was especially glad to see the reps since his bookstore is located in a remote, rural area where he rarely gets to meet with them in person. "Checking in and making those person-to-person connections is really important," he said.

About the forum, Lawrence said, there was a lot of consensus, but "even on issues where we have different opinions, the approach was, how do we make this work? There was no sniping, but a real sense of teamwork." --Karen Schechner