Advocacy

Amazon will begin collecting and remitting sales tax in Washington, D.C., in October. The decision appears to be related to Amazon’s desire to open a storefront location in the District.

Parnassus Books will launch an auction in-store and online this Sunday on more than 100 author-decorated piggy banks to help offset medical expenses for a store employee with cancer and to benefit the Book Industry Charitable Foundation.

Binc Co-Ambassador Ann Patchett films promotional video; ABFE joins protest over bookstore boycott; AAP CEO Tom Allen to step down; Bloomsbury USA restructures; NBF Director Lisa Lucas talks to NYT Magazine; Books Are My Bag Readers Awards to launch; Amazon to open dozens of pop-up stores in malls; Sharon Olds wins 2016 Wallace Stevens Award; FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award short list announced

ABA President Betsy Burton provides a first look at some of the frightening data from the soon-to-be released updated Civic Economics Amazon and Empty Storefronts Study and encourages booksellers to take advantage of the resources available to create a firestorm of public interest.

ABFE is urging bookstores to join the growing social media campaign supporting Banned Books Week, which for the first time will include the use of a social media service to broadcast the campaign’s message to millions of Internet users.

Ingram Content Group is supporting Banned Books Week by offering an additional discount on orders of 25 or more books chosen from a list of more than 450 banned or challenged titles on iPage®.

Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, declared a new holiday at the end of summer: On August 27, the store held a one-day sale that it called a First Amendment Sales Tax Holiday.

The platforms of the four U.S. presidential candidates — Democrat Hillary Clinton, Republican Donald Trump, Libertarian Gary Johnson, and the Green Party’s Jill Stein — address policies that could significantly impact small businesses.

On September 1, ABA joined American publishers, authors, and librarians in a letter urging President Obama to protest the widespread suppression of free speech in Turkey during his meeting with Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan in China.

A California bill that is expected to be signed into law will require private-sector companies with five or more employees either to offer an employer-sponsored retirement plan or to automatically enroll their employees in a new state-run Secure Choice retirement plan.

George by Alex Gino receives NAIBA’s Carla Cohen Free Speech Award; 2016 Hugo Award and John W. Campbell Award winners announced; Marilynne Robinson wins 2016 Holbrooke Award

In his latest column on the history of the fight for free speech, ABFE Director Chris Finan looks at the case against a bookseller that finally led the Massachusetts legislature to change the state’s obscenity law.

Following a controversial proposal by Rutland, Vermont’s mayor to accept up to 100 Syrian refugees, Will Notte, senior bookseller at Phoenix Books Rutland and president of the city’s Board of Aldermen, created a book display to educate residents about the country and its people.

This week, the city councils of Minneapolis and Cleveland rejected minimum wage increase proposals; Colorado took a step towards putting a statewide minimum wage initiative on the November ballot; and Iowa’s Linn County supervisors are voting on whether to draft a minimum wage ordinance.