IndieCommerce Institute Registration Underway

Registration for the American Booksellers Association’s second IndieCommerce Institute [1](ICI), which opened last Wednesday, will close on August 22. To help create an engaging and interactive learning environment, participation is capped at 100 booksellers with a maximum of two attendees per store.

The IndieCommerce Institute will be held in White Plains, New York, on Thursday, September 13, 2012, with a reception on the evening of Wednesday, September 12, and opportunities for hour-long one-on-one sessions with IndieCommerce staff on Wednesday afternoon and Friday morning, September 14.

Registration is open to bookstores with live IndieCommerce websites and those whose sites will go live by September 1, 2012. The educational program will be useful to new and experienced IndieCommerce users alike, but attendees should have completed basic training and have a fundamental understanding of the tools for managing content and processing orders on their websites.

Thursday’s full day of programming will begin with a plenary session that will include detailed information about the future of e-books on IndieCommerce websites. Booksellers will then break into two separate courses for the bulk of the day: a Main Session for users at all levels and an Advanced Workshop for very experienced IndieCommerce users. All attendees will reconvene for closing remarks at the end of the day.

The Main Session will go beyond basic training and will provide actionable information for new and experienced stores presented alongside real-world examples. The focus will be on best practices that have emerged over the past 12 to 18 months, little-known and under-utilized features, and common points of confusion experienced even by seasoned IndieCommerce stores.

The Advanced Workshop is for highly experienced IndieCommerce users. Participants will spend most of the day in a small-group workshop setting, learning directly from each other as they provide critiques of each other’s sites. This format, which was well-received at the first ICI, is being expanded this year to allow for more time and richer discussion.

Advanced Workshop attendees will be required to spend a significant amount of time reviewing their peers’ websites and writing critiques before the session begins. Booksellers who are interested in the Advanced Workshop must apply, and there are likely to be more applicants than available spaces.

The registration fee is $99 for the Main Session and $139 for the Advanced Workshop.

Full details and a link to the ICI registration form are available here. [1]