ABA Announces Location of 2013 Winter Institute

As planning continues for January’s Winter Institute [1] in New Orleans, this week the American Booksellers Association announced that the 2013 Winter Institute will be held in Kansas City, Missouri. Wi8 will begin with an opening reception on Friday, February 22, 2013, and will feature programming from Saturday, February 23, to Monday, February 25.

“We’re very excited to be going to Kansas City in 2013,” said ABA CEO Oren Teicher. “Since launching the first Winter Institute, ABA has worked to move the location to various cities nationwide in order to help member stores in different regions attend. Kansas City offers a wide range of resources that we believe will help ensure a very productive and enjoyable institute for both booksellers and publishers.” Attendance at Wi8 will again be capped in order to ensure a dynamic and intimate event.

Teicher also noted that by going to Kansas City in February 2013 ABA could coordinate schedules with the National Association of College Store’s Campus Market Expo (CAMEX), which will also be held in Kansas City over those days.

“Recognizing the growing importance of non-book in our members’ inventory, a key focus of Wi8 will be non-book,” Teicher said. “Given the wide and diverse range of non-book merchandise featured at CAMEX, an additional benefit of going to Kansas City in 2013 will be that booksellers will be able to experience the CAMEX trade floor and have the opportunity to expand their knowledge of and business relationships with a number of non-book vendors at no extra cost to attendees.”

ABA and NACS will be working closely in anticipation of Wi8. Teicher said, “We believe that this is another example of how cooperation with other trade associations on the right projects can be especially valuable to ABA members. We are very grateful to our friends at NACS for all their collegial collaboration.” Teicher noted that the schedule coordination between the Winter Institute and CAMEX was a “one-time experiment,” which would be carefully evaluated after the event.

Watch for more information about Wi8 in Kansas City in next year’s editions of BTW.