Winter Institute Registration Now Full: Waiting List Forming

Registration for the American Booksellers Association’s Eighth Annual Winter Institute has reached its limit of 500 booksellers, and names are now being added to a waiting list.

Wi8, sponsored by the Ingram Content Group, is open exclusively to ABA bookstore and provisional members and is capped at 500 booksellers with a maximum of three registrants per member business to ensure a dynamic yet intimate educational program. Booksellers can add their names to the waiting list via the Winter Institute website, wi8.bookweb.org [1].

Registered booksellers who are no longer planning to attend Wi8 are asked to contact ABA [2] as soon as possible so that waiting booksellers can take their places.

Wi8 will be held from Saturday, February 23, through Monday, February 25, 2013, at the Westin Kansas City at Crown Center in Kansas City, Missouri. An opening reception, sponsored by Andrews McMeel Publishing, will kick off the event, on Friday evening, February 22, at Kansas City’s majestic Union Station.

The three-day education program features more than 25 sessions, plenaries with bestselling authors Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Pink, peer advisory groups, reps’ picks lunches, publisher meetings, a galley room, special events, and a trip for booksellers to the National Association of College Stores’ (NACS) 2013 CAMEX trade show [3]. As part of the ABA/NACS cooperation, booksellers who take the field trip during Wi8, or visit CAMEX on their own following the institute, will receive a $100 rebate for placing an order of any size from a vendor exhibiting at the show.

The ABA group rate at the Westin Kansas City at Crown Center — $119 for singles and doubles — are available for accommodations from Tuesday, February 19, through Thursday, February 28, 2013. Reservations must be made by 5:00 p.m. Central Time on Tuesday, January 22, 2013, to receive the Wi8 rate. The room block could sell out before the reservation deadline, so booksellers are encouraged to make their reservations as soon as possible via the hotel website, starwoodmeeting.com [4]. The ABA group code is available on the Wi8 website [5].