About ABA

New volunteer booksellers have joined in key ABA activities, on both the Booksellers Advisory Council (BAC) and the ABA Nominating Committee. The booksellers were appointed by incoming ABA President Ann Christophersen of Chicago’s Women & Children First, and the appointments were unanimously approved by the ABA Board at its recent May meeting. The members of the 2003 Nominating Committee are:

Booksellers should by now have received a letter from ABA describing the official launch of the ABA Book Buyer’s Handbook Online, which can be found at http://handbook.bookweb.org/ or via the Book Buyer’s Handbook icon at BookWeb.org.

The launch of the Book Buyer’s Handbook online on April 25 has enabled ABA to add new data and to change incorrect information on an ongoing basis to provide booksellers with a comprehensive source for accurate, timely information about publishers’, wholesalers’, and distributors’ trade terms. In order to maintain the data’s accuracy, the association is seeking the help of booksellers, as well as publishers, in alerting handbook staff to new or changing terms.

Ann Christophersen This year’s Town Hall Meeting was filled with positive and constructive comments from attending booksellers.

And the Winners Are…. At this year's Celebration of Bookselling at BookExpo America, Leif Enger's Peace Like a River (Atlantic Monthly) won the Book Sense Book of the Year award as best adult fiction title. The winner for adult nonfiction was Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House), and the winner of the rediscovery award -- presented for the first time this year -- was given to My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett, illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett (Random House).

ABA has announced that David Walker of Washington, D.C., an independent consultant in the book industry, will be working with the association on matters relating to industry relations. Walker has been an independent consultant for the past five years. During that time, he worked with ABA on a number of projects, including the processing of claims relating to the Penguin lawsuit settlement. Prior to becoming an industry consultant, Walker was general manager of Olsson's Books in Washington, D.C. He worked at Olsson’s for 11 years.

ABA has announced the results of the 2002 elections for Board officers and directors. The candidates chosen to serve as ABA Board directors were: Neal Coonerty, owner of Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California; Russ Lawrence, co-owner of Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton, Montana; and Karl Pohrt, owner of Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Board members serve three-year terms. Coonerty and Pohrt are currently Board members.

Since its online launch in January, Bookselling This Week has gotten high marks for its increased postings of news and features and its ease of use. Since going online, BTW has also seen a 57 percent increase in its subscription base. However, many bookseller readers have noted to ABA that they miss the easy accessibility of a printed version of a weekly BTW.

Beginning today, ABA members can access all the fully updated information in the ABA Book Buyer’s Handbook (BBH) in an online edition. In development for over a year, the online BBH provides access to approximately 5,600 publisher, wholesaler, and distributor listings in a fully interactive format, which can be searched by such criteria as company name, keyword, and ISBN prefix.

When booksellers from Kansas to Louisiana and all points in between travel hundreds of miles in the middle of the week to meet for three hours in Dallas, they want to accomplish a lot. And they did on April 10 in Dallas -- according to a number of booksellers who attended both an ABA Booksellers Forum and bookseller programming, which was sponsored by the Mid-South Independent Booksellers Association (MSIBA). Both events were hosted by The Enchanted Forest Bookstore.