In the Spotlight: ABA Board Candidate Ken White

Ballots now in the hands of the American Booksellers Association's bookstore members feature the names of three candidates up for election to serve three-year terms on the Board of Directors beginning in June: Ken White of SFSU Bookstore in San Francisco; Dan Chartrand of Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, New Hampshire; and Michael Tucker of Books Inc. in San Francisco, a current Board member who is eligible for a second three-year term. Board officers on the ballot for approval by membership are Gayle Shanks of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, for president, and Tucker for vice-president/secretary.

This week, in the second of a series of candidate profiles, BTW talks to Ken White of SFSU Bookstore.

A San Francisco Bay Area native, Ken White used to cut classes to hang out at Cody's Books and Moe's Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. "When I graduated from college, my dream job was to work at A Different Light Bookstore in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood," he said. "I ended up working there from 1991 until 2000." White then went to work for a year in the Marketing Department of HarperSanFrancisco.

In mid-2001, he returned to retail as the manager of the General Books Department at SFSU Bookstore. The approximately 15,000-square-foot store, founded in 1954, is an independent nonprofit, 501c3 corporation governed by a board of directors consisting of teachers, students, and campus administrators.

At SFSU, White has concentrated on increasing sales and controlling costs of the General Books Department, and since 2003 sales have jumped 30 percent. Along with other SFSU booksellers, he has worked to increase campus awareness of the bookstore as an independent nonprofit and to foster "greater collaboration with members of the campus community."

As a member of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA) Board of Directors for the past several years, White has focused on education and the regional's annual fall trade show. Currently the secretary of the executive committee, he will give up his seat on the NCIBA Board this May, but plans to remain active in the association.

"One of my pet projects at the moment is to create dialogue between Bay Area small publishers and NCIBA members," said White. "There is a wealth of independent publishing happening in the Bay Area, but these presses may not have the resources to effectively communicate with local bookstores. We are looking at ways to set up relationships that benefit both the publishers and the stores so everyone can sell more books."

White has been a member of ABA's Booksellers Advisory Council and the Education Task Force.

If elected to the ABA Board, White said that he wanted to work to "maintain the standard of high quality education that is being provided to our membership." He added, "Coming up with new programs, and periodically bringing back important sessions from years past, is crucial for us to strengthen ourselves professionally." --Karen Schechner

NOTE: All ABA Board ballots must be returned to ABA's auditors, Marks Paneth & Shron LLP, in the postage-paid envelope provided. The envelope must be postmarked by April 30 and received by May 7.