About Bookselling

Nicki Leone, manager of Bristol Books in Wilmington, North Carolina, was recently invited by author M.J. Rose (The Halo Effect, Mira) to be a "guest blogger" on Rose's Weblog. Leone's assignment: To "write about anything related to getting books read." Thanks to Nicki Leone and M.J. Rose for allowing BTW to share with our readers this lighthearted look at the extent to which a bookseller will go to sell a book.

Jessica Stockton of Three Lives & Company in New York City was recently named the winner of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association's contest that asked booksellers to write an essay that began with "I am a bookseller because …"

Traffic on ABA's four online booksellers' forums on BookWeb.org has always had its ups and downs, but as we slip into the final weeks of summer, it has dropped off significantly, and this is distressing to some ABA member booksellers who view the forums as a vital tool for the exchange of ideas.

This article is part of a series on the Guerrilla Marketing Web site and is reprinted here with the permission of Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the bestselling series Guerrilla Marketing and co-founder of Guerrilla Marketing International, Inc. By Debra Kahn Schofield

The last full-week workshop of 2004 for prospective booksellers, sponsored by the Paz & Associates Bookstore Training & Consulting Group in conjunction with the American Booksellers Association, will be held from Monday, September 13, through Friday, September 17, at The Reserve at Cherry Creek in Denver, Colorado.

The number-one goal of ABA's strategic plan is to "provide independent professional booksellers with access to the education, information, and business services they need to succeed in a changing world." With this in mind, the ABA Board of Directors and staff are embarking on a program to grow ABA's educational offerings and are seeking bookseller input through the "ABA Education 2005 Survey." This week, a link to the survey was sent to ABA members via e-mail.

While the Ides of March didn't turn out so great for Julius Caesar, this past March 15 did augur well for seasoned bookseller Lyle Starkloff, who opened Query Booksellers, a new gay and lesbian bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Starkloff has already seen considerable increase in traffic and business from the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) community in the Twin Cities, as well as from the straight-but-not-narrow contingent, particularly since Query carries many categories outside gay and lesbian literature.

On Saturday, June 5, at BookExpo America, ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz conducted the two-hour session "The 2% Solution," a comprehensive seminar that suggested ways in which operators of bookstores could address issues related to lack of profitability. "The thrust of the session is to try to go from a negative profitability to a positive," Domnitz said in his opening remarks. "This used to be called a two percent industry…. The thing that struck me about it, is that it is doable."

Friday, June 4 -- Day 2 of BookExpo America -- was the occasion of two joyous celebrations of the spirit of independent booksellers -- the Book Sense Book and Author Lunch and ABA's Celebration of Bookselling, where the 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year Award winners were announced. It was also opening day of the trade show floor and a day for ABA to take care of business at its Town Hall and Annual Membership meetings. And the Winners Are…

The New York International Gift Fair, for which approximately 45,000 visitors came to the Jacob Javits Convention Center between January 31 and February 5, is the place to find out what's hot and what's not. Any retailer who carries stationery, greeting cards, watches, pens, and all manner of personal accessories would have found almost 3,000 exhibitors happy to demonstrate what will unquestionably sell out in the coming seasons.