About ABA

Last weekend ABA CEO Oren Teicher was the keynote speaker at the British Columbia Booksellers Association’s Winter Education Day.  Teicher’s two talks focused on book industry trends and the opportunities and challenges facing independent booksellers across North America.

The American Booksellers Association’s Board of Directors met on January 16 and 17, 2012, prior to the seventh annual Winter Institute, at the Astor Crowne Plaza in New Orleans.

The American Booksellers Association will be hosting two programs in conjunction with the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance in March.

ABA’s first spring Booksellers Forum of 2012 will be held on Thursday, March 8, at Towne Book Center & Café in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, in conjunction with the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association.

On March 8, representatives of ABA (Board members and senior staff) will be hitting the road for the first in this year’s series of 10 spring Booksellers Forums. These open forums are designed to provide member booksellers with the opportunity to share ideas, discuss industry issues, and receive updates on various association projects. Each will also feature an educational session drawn from the recently concluded Winter Institute.

On Wednesday, ABA CEO Oren Teicher told Digital Book World attendees that “not only are indie booksellers surviving in extraordinarily turbulent times, but many ... are thriving, even recording record sales numbers for the fourth quarter of last year.”

From the opening plenary to the closing working group activity, booksellers were energized by Winter Institute 7’s many opportunities to learn and network. Publishers, too, found inspiration, knowledge, and invaluable connections.

Due to a database error, the story on ABA member store openings in 2011, which appeared in the January 12 edition of BTW, omitted four member stores. Forty-one ABA member stores opened in 2011.

*Forty-one ABA member bookstores opened in 2011, including seven branches of existing businesses and eight that sell primarily used books.

George Fox Rishel, the proprietor of The Sly Fox in Virden, Illinois, recently shared his thoughts on the future of bricks-and-mortar bookstores in a letter to ABA CEO Oren Teicher. Published here, with permission, is his letter and ABA’s response.

The December issue of the ABC Toolbox, which includes programming, display, and event ideas, as well as access to free materials from publishers, was sent via e-mail last week to members of the ABC Children’s Group at ABA.

ABA CEO Oren Teicher shares his recent experience as a holiday helper at Politics & Prose and encourages booksellers to ramp up marketing efforts to capture post-holiday e-book sales.

On Monday, Apple approved the American Booksellers Association’s IndieBound Reader™ for iOS, and it is now available for download in the App Store.

ABA CEO Oren Teicher has written an open letter to Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos that highlights the glaring discrepancy between the company’s recent statements in support of sales tax fairness and Amazon’s latest exploitation of an inequitable strategic advantage.

Independent bookstores are showing continued resilience this holiday season, with reported online and in-store sales well over last year’s results, according to ABA.