MBA Plans a Winning Combination of Authors, Exhibits, and Education for Fall Show

The Midwest Booksellers Association (MBA) 25th Annual Trade Show will be held Friday, September 23, through Sunday, September 25, in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium at RiverCentre.

This year's trade show attendees will notice some exciting changes at the upcoming show, explained Susan Walker, MBA's executive director. New this year is the Midwest Booksellers' Choice Awards & Welcome Reception, to be held on Friday, September 23, beginning at 5:30 p.m. MBA has also made some changes to the arrangement of the exhibit floor. "We will have a display of MBA [holiday] catalogue titles ... [which] are going to be in the middle of the exhibit floor," said Walker. "And there's going to be an informal seating area, where people can sit at a table and work, or have a short meeting." She also emphasized that, as in the past, this year's show has a plethora of educational offerings for attendees.

Education programming for the show will include a session sponsored by the American Booksellers Association: "The 2% Solution: An Introduction to Profitability," led by BookSense.com Director Len Vlahos.

The Trade Show Exhibit will take place over two days. Exhibit hours will be 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday and from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Sunday. The first 90 minutes of the exhibit on Saturday will be reserved for independent bookseller members only, to give them an opportunity to focus on the business they wish to conduct with the publishers, wholesalers, and vendors exhibiting at the show. No meetings, formal autographing sessions, or other activities will be scheduled during this period.

ABA will have a booth on the trade show floor, where the focus will be on education and information. Booksellers are encouraged to stop by the booth to meet with ABA staff, including Vlahos; ABA COO Oren Teicher; and ABA Information Department Director and Book Sense Picks' Editor-in-Chief Dan Cullen.

Visitors to the booth can drop off their business cards for a chance to win airfare and hotel accommodations for ABA's Winter Institute or an inkjet printer. (ABA is encouraging booksellers to contact ABA staff members prior to the show if they have questions, suggestions, or comments. Questions and requests for information about ABA's participation at MPBA may also be directed to Associate Director of Programming and Constituent Groups Liaison, Kristen Gilligan at kristen@bookweb.org.)

Special events at the MBA trade show will include Friday's book awards, book and author breakfasts on Saturday and Sunday, a book and author dinner on Saturday evening, the "Moveable Feast" Sunday Authors Lunch, and formal author autographing sessions on the trade show floor on Saturday and Sunday.

The trade show kicks off on Friday with MBA's "Booksellers' School Education Sessions," which runs all day and includes a wealth of educational programs.

The morning's programming includes: a "first-timers'" orientation; a session on how to develop and profit from good working relationships with publishers and vendors; a presentation on using experiential marketing to benefit a store's brand; selling travel books, featuring Arthur Frommer; and the two-hour "Pick-of-the-Lists: Children's Books."

In the afternoon on Friday will be the session "The 2% Solution," held from 1:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. This seminar will look at the drivers of bookstore profitability and examine how these can be used to move a bookseller's business to greater profitability. Specific suggestions and ideas about how a bookseller can work on sales, gross margin, total compensation, and occupancy expenses will be provided. The ABACUS Study of independent bookstore operations showed that the average profitability of all respondents was -1.4 percent. While moving from negative profitability to +2 percent is a long journey, this seminar will help you start mapping a new course.

Other afternoon sessions include: "Community Connections," a panel on how to build community connections and benefit from them; "E-newsletters"; "Outside Sales," which includes presentations on business-to-business sales and sales to groups with specific interests; "Selling Audio Books"; "Pick-of-the-Lists: Adult Books"; and "Pick-of-the-Lists: University Presses & Regional Publishers."

Friday's educational programming concludes with "Minnesota Crime Wave," a session that will be both educational and amusing. "The Crime Wave" is a quartet of successful and popular Minnesota mystery authors: Ellen Hart, Carl Brookins, Deborah Woodworth, and William Kent Krueger. Their presentation will focus on the mystery genre, their own work, writing and publishing in general, and promotion.

Later that evening will be the Midwest Booksellers' Choice Awards & Welcome Reception, featuring two of the winning authors, Thomas Frank (What's the Matter With Kansas, Owl Books) and Blue Balliett (Chasing Vermeer, Scholastic). There will be a cash bar and light hors d'oeuvres.

For more information about the MBA trade show, including programming details, registration information, and a list of featured authors, go to www.midwestbooksellers.org.

Prior to the MBA trade show, "Opening a Bookstore: The Business Essentials," a weeklong workshop for those interested in opening, buying, or investing in a bookstore, will be held from Monday, September 19, to Saturday, September 24, in Stillwater, Minnesota. In addition to attending the workshop, participants will have the opportunity to visit area bookstores and to attend the MBA show. The workshop will be facilitated by Donna Paz Kaufman and Mark Kaufman of the Bookstore Training and Consulting Group of Paz & Associates and is co-sponsored by the American Booksellers Association. For details, visit www.pazbookbiz.com or call (800) 260-8605. --David Grogan