July Next List Debuts -- Great Reads From Booksellers You Trust

The new IndieBound [1] initiative is a community-oriented movement -- involving booksellers, readers, indie retailers, local business alliances, and others -- that proclaims the importance of independent businesses, promotes those values that make indies unique, and provides booksellers with help to spread the passion and sell more books.

One of the key tools is the Indie Next List [2] -- the successor to the Book Sense Picks List. Importantly, the Next List preserves the essence of the Picks: Every title on the list is drawn from bookseller-recommended favorites. Like the Picks list, each month the Next List will reflect the titles that independent booksellers are most excited about handselling to their customers.

The new name for the list reflects that reality: These are the titles that will be the next big read, the next talked-about titles, and, often, the next Indie Bestsellers. As the new logo for the Next List makes clear, these are "Great Reads From Booksellers You Trust."

In addition, the graphic presentation of the Next List has been refreshed and reinvigorated. The flier is now printed in full-color, and it presents that month's number-one title on the front cover. The new design -- a more compact, rectangular format when folded -- allows for more convenient and effective in-store display and merchandising, and the list still features previous selections now available in paperback and 20 additional "Notable" titles.

One other thing hasn't changed: Submitting nominations for titles to the Next List is as easy as possible.

Any ABA member bookseller can e-mail nominations to indienextlist@bookweb.org [3], or they can use a convenient online nomination form [4]. (The URL has changed for the online nomination form; so booksellers are encouraged to bookmark the new URL.) There's a whole lot more information about the Next List here [5], and more information about IndieBound here [6].