BTW News Briefs

MIBA Appoints New President

The Board of Director of the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association (MIBA) has appointed Tripp Ryder, the general trade manager at Carleton College Bookstore in Northfield, Minnesota, as MIBA president, effectively immediately. Ryder replaces Lanora Haradon, who resigned and announced the closing of Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon, Wisconsin, in mid-September.

MIBA also appointed David Enyeart, assistant manager at Common Good Books in St. Paul, Minnesota, to its board.

Ryder and Enyeart will fill these roles through MIBA’s 2013 trade show.

WNBA Celebrates National Reading Group Month

The Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) has designated October as National Reading Group Month, and to celebrate, local chapters in 10 cities around the country are offering a series of events, in addition to WNBA’s signature event this Saturday, October 13, in Nashville. The program at the Nashville Public Library Downtown will feature authors Ben Fountain (Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ecco/HarperCollins), Christopher Tilghman (The Right-Hand Shore, Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Gail Tsukiyama (A Hundred Flowers, St. Martin’s Press), and Karen Thompson Walker (The Age of Miracles, Random House).

WNBA’s “Great Group Reads 2012 Selections,” which features 19 novels and one memoir, is available here. ABA members were also sent information about National Reading Group Month in the September Red Box mailing.

AAUP Launches Books That Matter

In the lead-up to its 75^th anniversary, the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) is launching the Books That Matter essay series.  

“The titles featured in Books that Matter celebrate the ongoing relevance of ideas to the lives of real people, and underscore the continuing vitality of the university presses that have bravely brought these great books into being,” said Peter Dougherty, director of Princeton University Press.

In the first in the essay series, now featured on AAUP’s blog, editors and publishers tell the stories of three very different books that have changed the world:  Justifiable Homicide (Cynthia Gillespie, Ohio University Press); A More Noble Cause (Rachel Emanuel and Alexander P. Tureaud, Jr., Louisiana University Press); and Blue Highways Revisited (Ed Ailor, University of Missouri Press). 

AAUP will release more narratives of the books that mattered in the coming weeks.

Kobo Expands in New Zealand

This week, Kobo, which has partnered with New Zealand’s leading book chain, Whitcoulls, since 2010, announced new partnerships with Booksellers NZ and The Paper Plus Group.  

Kobo is now working with independent bookstore members of Booksellers NZ and the Paper Plus Group to bring Kobo eBooks and eReaders to almost 300 retail locations across the country.

“We are delighted to reach an agreement with Kobo that will allow the independent members of Booksellers NZ to add the eBook format to the great book selling service they already provide their customers in communities throughout New Zealand,” said Booksellers NZ CEO Lincoln Gould. “We will be working with our members immediately to equip them with all the technical support, training and marketing tools in time for them to engage in this new opportunity before Christmas.”

In other news this week, Kobo announced plans to acquire Aquafadas, a leading digital publishing technology company. Kobo said the move will enable it “to bring a selection of rich media — magazines, academic, comics, kids’ books and more to Kobo customers everywhere.”

SBA Loan Dollars Reach Second Highest Total Ever

With loan volume steadily increasing for the past six quarters, the U.S. Small Business Administration announced this week that its loan programs posted the second largest dollar volume ever in FY 2012, amounting to $30.25 billion in loan support to small businesses. That volume was surpassed only by FY 2011, which was heavily boosted by the loan incentives under the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010.

Over the past year, SBA began streamlining and simplifying many of the loan programs in order to provide more access and opportunity for both lenders and small businesses. As part of this effort, SBA encouraged lenders to use more of their own paperwork and the agency’s updated processing systems, so that more than 80 percent of its loan applications can now be processed online. During the fiscal year, which ended September 30, SBA loan approvals supported $30.25 billion (53,848 loans) to small businesses in its two main loan programs, 7(a) and 504, compared to $30.5 billion (61,689 loans) in FY 2011 and $22.6 billion (60,771 loans) in FY 2010. 

For more information about these and other SBA programs, visit the SBA website at sba.gov.