Booksellers Find Value in IndieCommerce Institute

Last Tuesday, almost 70 booksellers attended the American Booksellers Association’s inaugural IndieCommerce Institute (ICI) in Chicago. The educational event, which was sponsored by the Ingram Content Group, was split into three tracks—introductory, experienced, and master class.

The feedback received from many of the attendees is providing ABA staff members with both a sense of the event’s success and information to plan for future programming.

“Sustained, tech-focused educational sessions like these are new territory for ABA, and we were very happy with booksellers’ response to the event,” said ABA Technology Director Matt Supko.

“We are very grateful to the booksellers who attended this first one-day institute, both for their active and creative participation, and for the detailed feedback they gave us at the end of the programming,” said Content Officer Dan Cullen. “While the booksellers’ evaluations and comments showed that the first IndieCommerce Institute successfully provided a wide range of educational content that will help the participating booksellers, looking ahead, we will also be studying how we can make such educational offerings even stronger and more responsive to members’ needs.”

Matthew Curtis, a bookseller at BookPeople in Austin, Texas, attended Track 1 at ICI, which was led by IndieCommerce Senior Customer Service Rep Scott Nafz with the help of fellow Customer Service Rep Valerie Federici.  “It was very enlightening,” Curtis said. “I walked away with a lot of good hints and have been working on the website ever since.”

Since a large part of Track 1, which was aimed at new IndieCommerce users and those who needed a refresher course, was getting acclimated with the website, Curtis felt he could have moved up a level. “It was a little slow at first, but it definitely helped fill in the blanks. Valerie [Federici] offered to move me to Track 2, but I enjoyed the teacher so much, I stayed where I was.”

One of Curtis’ colleagues attended Track 2, and she, along with Curtis, has been experimenting with BookPeople’s site, especially focusing on adding a book fair option for when the store visits schools.

Kelly Estep, a manager at Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky, has been maintaining her store’s website with no previous website experience or training aside from the initial assistance she received from the IndieCommerce team when she set up the store site. Estep attended Track 2, which she found to be “the perfect level” for her.

“It was wonderful,” she said. “It was exactly what I needed, and absolutely worth the time.”

Since ICI was a one-day event that packed a lot of information into each session, Estep said she would have benefited from an extended event.

“I would’ve loved to have had two days,” she said “since a great part of being at ABA education events is getting to talk to other people.” Because of that, Estep appreciated the open setup of the room, which was conducive to conversation.

Estep said that taking on the responsibility of running the store website was a “steep learning curve” initially, so it was helpful to receive formal instruction from ABA’s IndieCommerce Team. Association staff members leading Track 2 were COO Len Vlahos and Marketing Manager Paige Poe, with the help of Christine Onorati, owner of WORD in Brooklyn, New York.

“I know there are a lot of things that can be done on this site that I’m not doing now,” Estep said. “So it was great to see some of those things that I wouldn’t have been able to figure out on my own.”

Ben Newcomer, the IT coordinator for Harvard Book Store, attended Track 3, which was a master class aimed at booksellers who are comfortable working with HTML and IndieCommerce’s site building tools.

“It was definitely a valuable experience,” he said, adding that each attendee probably took away something different. “The part that I found most useful was the critique and open discussion, as opposed to the walk-through, which was helpful, but by necessity, very specific.”

Since attendees of the master class had different needs, Newcomer said that he hopes, in the future, to be able to choose which topics he’d like to see covered at length. Newcomer said that his participation in ICI Track 3, which was led by ABA Technology Director Matt Supko and Project Manager Geetha Nathan, has reduced the time needed for him to experiment with different elements of the website on his own.

“It was helpful to see the process repeated in a couple of different ways,” Newcomer said. “It gives me a quicker starting point for projects.”