ABA Names 2012 Board Candidates

Petition Process Opens for Additional Candidates

At its spring meeting, the American Booksellers Association’s Board of Directors [1] named three director candidates to stand for election to three-year terms (2012 - 2015) on the Board: Betsy Burton of The King’s English Bookshop [2] in Salt Lake City, Utah; Valerie Koehler of Blue Willow Bookshop [3] in Houston, Texas; and Jonathon Welch of Talking Leaves Books [4] in Buffalo, New York.

Burton and Koehler currently serve on the Board. Burton is coming to the end of her first three-year term as a director and is eligible for a second three-year term. Koehler, who was appointed by the Board last spring to fill the vacancy created by the March 2011 Bylaws amendment [5], which made the presidency a separate and distinct position from the Board of Directors, is up for her first full three-year term.

Burton, Koehler, and Welch’s names will appear on the Board ballot to be sent to ABA members via e-mail at the beginning of April, 60 days prior to the June 5 Annual Membership Meeting at the Javits Convention Center during BookExpo America [6].

The Board did not name officer candidates for the 2012 elections as, in keeping with last year’s Bylaws amendment, Becky Anderson of Anderson’s Bookshops [7] in Naperville, Illinois, and Steve Bercu of Austin’s BookPeople [8] will begin the second year of their two-year terms as ABA president and vice president, respectively, this spring.

Under the Bylaws [9], in addition to candidates put forth by the Nominating Committee and approved by the Board, any bookstore member may submit a petition for a director candidate; there is a timeframe of approximately one month to circulate petitions to place additional names on the ballot. Upon receipt of a valid petition, the ABA Nominating Committee will add the petitioned candidate’s name to the Director ballot.

Should bookstore members wish to submit a petition, the following apply:

• A candidate must be an employee or owner of an ABA member bookstore. The member bookstore must be in good standing, and the individual candidate must have at least three years’ experience in a bookstore-member company.
• Each petition can present only one candidate.
• All petitions must be submitted by April 2, 2012, to the Chair, ABA Nominating Committee, c/o ABA, 200 White Plains Rd., Tarrytown, NY 10591.
• The names on the petition in support of the candidate must reflect at least two percent of ABA Bookstore Members as of January 1, 2012; that is a minimum of 27 signatures. The petition must contain original signatures and the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of bookstore members in at least five states, with representatives of no one state constituting more than 50 percent of the total number of petition signatures.

Upon receipt of a valid petition, the Nominating Committee will add the candidate’s name to the ballot sent to ABA membership.

The 2012 Nominating Committee members were ABA Board member Sarah Bagby of Watermark Books & Cafe [10] in Wichita, Kansas (chair); Board member John Evans of DIESEL, A Bookstore [11] in Brentwood, California; Dick Hermans of Oblong Books and Music [12] in Millerton, New York; Leslie Reiner of Inkwood Books [13] in Tampa, Florida; and former ABA President Michael Tucker of Books Inc. [14] in San Francisco.

If any bookstore member is working to circulate a petition, BTW would like to know. [15]