Education

This season’s schedule of 11 ABA Booksellers Forums will come to an end on Wednesday, May 8, in Maplewood, New Jersey.

ABA will travel to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on Thursday, April 25, and Tuesday, April 30, respectively, to host Booksellers Forum programs. Each will feature an open discussion of industry issues, a Kobo eReader training program, and the ABA education session “The 10 Things You Must Do Now!”

Publishers request dismissal of booksellers’ lawsuit; BEA Blogger Conference to feature Will Schwalbe, Randi Zuckerberg; SBA and AARP host National Encore Entrepreneur Mentor Month; National Book Awards judges include indie booksellers; University of Nebraska Press acquires Potomac Books; Arthur Frommer takes brand back; Penguin lessens restrictions on eBooks for libraries; Hugo Award finalists announced

John Sargent, Macmillan CEO, will be the featured speaker at the opening plenary session, kicking off Bookselling Today & ABA Education at BEA on Wednesday, May 29. He will be joined by ABA President Becky Anderson for a discussion about the challenges facing the book industry.

The ABC Children’s Group at ABA is once again partnering with the Children’s Book Council to host several events at BookExpo America that are open exclusively to ABC Group member booksellers. Designed to promote networking and education, the events all have a special focus on children’s books and bookselling.

Whether you’re testing the waters or already a new owner, the May workshop retreat “Owning a Bookstore: The Business Essentials” will provide critical retail fundamentals and indie bookstore best practices for establishing a competitive business.

ABA is asking member booksellers who participated in Winter Institute 8 to complete a short survey about all aspects of last month’s event in Kansas City. The survey will arrive via e-mail within the next few days.

At the Winter Institute session “Beyond the Traditional Author Event,”panelists sweet pea Flaherty of King’s Books, Lacey Dunham of Politics and Prose, and Lauren Savage of The Reading Bug addressed the logistics of planning successful and creative events to increase traffic and drive sales.

At this past weekend’s eighth annual Winter Institute in Kansas City, ABA announced that Winter Institute 9 would be heading to Seattle, Washington.

Booksellers are asked to tell ABA about some of the creative things they have done to make their stores more successful and profitable via a short, online survey. Responses will help in the formulation of the Spring Forum season’s educational component, “The Top 10 Things You Must Do Now!”