About ABA

The Bookseller Relief Fund (BRF) recently distributed $80,000 to Gulf Coast booksellers most severely affected by Hurricane Katrina. The disbursement was the second phase of a plan created by the Bookseller Relief Fund Board to provide humanitarian assistance to those most in need.

There will be no issue of Bookselling This Week between Christmas and New Year's Day. However, the Book Sense Bestseller List will be created and will be e-mailed to booksellers and posted to BookWeb on Wednesday, December 28.

Book Sense wants to remind booksellers that it is crucial to keep reporting to the lists at this busiest time of year as next week's list will reflect, what is for most, the last big surge of holiday sales.

The American Booksellers Association has released preliminary registration figures for its inaugural Winter Institute to be held in Long Beach, California, on Thursday, January 26, and on Friday, January 27.

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.

Recognizing that the Latino population is the fastest growing minority group in the nation, the American Booksellers Association recently convened a Spanish-Language Bookstore Focus Group to gather information about the experiences and needs of independent booksellers serving Spanish-speaking communities.

Here's a look at new ABA-member bookstores opening in November, plus several stores that opened over the spring and summer, which were not previously reported in Bookselling This Week. Also listed are several member stores that have recently changed ownership.

The American Booksellers Association recently launched the Booksellers Resource Directory (BRD), a listing of vendors of nonbook products and services, open to ABA bookstore, provisional, and publisher members.

Here are important reminders related to ABA and Book Sense programs and events for the period December 2005 through February 2006. The list may also be downloaded in PDF format.

In response to requests from member booksellers, the American Booksellers Association has created an online forum specifically for users of the Anthology inventory control system. The new forum link is located directly below the general Inventory Control Forum on Bookweb's Idea Exchange. Booksellers requested the Anthology forum to essentially create an "Anthology users group."

On Thursday, November 17, the American Booksellers Association announced the launch of the Booksellers Resource Directory (BRD), an electronic source for information about vendors of nonbook products and services, open to ABA bookstore, provisional, and publisher members.

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.

While some people go out of their way to shop at only independents, one couple has taken it a little bit farther -- 13,000 miles farther to be exact.

The American Booksellers Association will convene a Spanish-Language Bookstore Focus Group on the world of Spanish-language bookselling, in both Spanish-language stores and within general trade stores, on November 18 at the 2005 Miami Book Fair International (MBFI). The goal of the group will be to better understand the needs and challenges of bookselling to, and by, the Latino community, with an eye towards developing new education, marketing, and other programs to meet these needs.

 The American Booksellers Association has created two new membership offers -- one for non-member booksellers in the U.S. and the other for members of the Canadian Booksellers Association who would also like to hold membership in ABA.

The deadline for nominations of candidates to serve on the American Booksellers Association's Board of Directors is Friday, October 28.