Atlantic City Here We Come

ABA will be joining members of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) at the regional's fall trade show to be held on Sunday, October 24, and Monday, October 25, at the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey. As part of the full day of educational programming on Sunday, from 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m., ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz will be presenting "The 2% Solution," a seminar that looks at the drivers of profitability and examines how they can be reworked to move a bookstore to greater profitability.

In addition, as part of NAIBA's mini-workshops on the trade show floor on Monday, ABA Marketing Director Jill Perlstein will conduct a "Book Sense Gift Card Users Group" from 11:00 a.m. - noon, and from 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m., Len Vlahos, director of BookSense.com, will facilitate a "BookSense.com Users Group."

Demonstrations of the Book Sense Gift Card program will be ongoing at the ABA booth on the trade show floor, and one-on-one meetings may be scheduled in advance by sending an e-mail to Perlstein at [email protected]. ABA is hoping that booksellers will take advantage of this chance to learn about the program, and sign up in time for the holidays. As an incentive to try the gift card, ABA will waive the one-time $25 set-up fee for booksellers signing up at each trade show. (If you plan to sign up at the show, please bring your checking account info with you. For more details on the program, visit http://www.bookweb.org/read/6303) (To read what participating booksellers had to say about Book Sense gift cards, click here.)

Association staff, including ABA's associate director of programming and constituent groups liaison, Kristen Gilligan, will be at the ABA booth to gather member input about ABA education initiatives to meet the number-one goal of ABA's strategic plan, "to provide independent professional booksellers with access to the education, information, and business services they need to succeed in a changing world." The "ABA Education 2005 Survey" was recently sent to members via e-mail and can be downloaded in PDF format by clicking here. Survey forms will also be available at the booth. (Booksellers returning surveys at the trade show will be entered into a sweepstakes to win a color, inkjet computer printer.)

For more about the NAIBA trade show, click here.