Education

This week, the American Booksellers Association unveils a preliminary schedule of its programming for BookExpo America 2006 in Washington, D.C. From Thursday, May 18, through Sunday, May 21, ABA is offering a wide array of educational programming and special events, including the popular Book Sense Author Lunch and the Celebration of Bookselling. New this year, is an ABA Legislative Day on Wednesday, May 17, which will provide booksellers with the opportunity to meet with their senators and representatives on Capitol Hill.

While most booksellers would agree that Advance Reading Copies (ARCs) are a useful and necessary tool for gauging the sales potential for all kinds of books, sometimes galleys can pile up in the stock room in a hurry. Since booksellers can't read them all, nor keep them all, Bookselling This Week decided to ask a few publishers and booksellers for their tips about what to do with ARCs once bookstores are finished with them.

By Lance Fensterman When was the last time you stood refueling your car and didn't see, essentially, a convenience store inside the gas station? Have you been to a movie theatre recently that had no concession stand? Did you know that Best Buy is now opening stores where you can get a pedicure and buy organic healthcare products while you learn about the latest iPod innovations?

More than 130 booksellers answered an early wake-up call for the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute's 7:15 a.m. "What Are You Reading?" Breakfast. Patterned after the popular ABA lunchtime event at BookExpo America, the breakfast was an opportunity for many of the approximately 360 booksellers gathered in Long Beach for ABA's two-day education program to network and to share with colleagues some of the titles they are excited about.

ABA member booksellers may now share Word files, PDFs, and other documents relating to professional development through a simple upload process on BookWeb's Idea Exchange Education Forum. ABA has enabled this function to allow booksellers to share ideas, best business practices, forms, lists, and other resource materials that may exist in different formats.

Twenty-two lucky booksellers were recently informed that they were the recipients of publisher-sponsored scholarships to the American Booksellers Association's first annual Winter Institute. In addition, ABA announced the winner of its Emerging Leader Scholarship, awarded to a bookseller who has been in the business for less than two years and who shows a commitment to furthering the success of independent bookselling.

The American Booksellers Association's first annual Winter Institute, to be held on January 26 and 27, 2006, in Long Beach, California, is gearing up to be a winter wonderland of excellent educational programs and networking for attending booksellers. The weekend in California is certain to prove even more rewarding for booksellers who have won scholarships to the Winter Institute.

The American Booksellers Association has announced the availability of a third night's accommodations at the special reduced hotel rate for booksellers attending the first annual Winter Institute, to be held on Thursday, January 26, and Friday, January 27, 2006, in Long Beach, California.

ABA member booksellers can now register for ABA's first annual Winter Education Institute, to be held on Thursday, January 26, and Friday, January 27, 2006, in Long Beach, California. Open to all ABA member booksellers -- owners and staff -- and free of charge, the Institute's comprehensive program includes all of ABA's education sessions from this past June's BookExpo America, as well as two new sessions developed in response to bookseller input gathered through ABA's 2006 Education Survey.

To create a 2006 education program that meets the needs of membership, the American Booksellers Association is asking booksellers for their input through an online survey, accessible through the BookWeb homepage or directly at www.bookweb.org/read/7981.