Industry News

Baby Boomers featured as pillars of indie bookselling; Utah goes local during “Shift Your Spending” week; Unabridged Bookstore to mark 35 years; Battenkill Books opens new children’s room

Tamblyn to become CEO of Kobo; Outstanding science trade books for students K–12 announced; Author/founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day organizes bookstore field trip; Vicki Lansky to retire from Book Peddlers

David Cohen, a pioneering Washington lobbyist and the former co-owner with his late wife, Carla Cohen, and Barbara Meade of Politics & Prose, died on Sunday, November 29, at the age of 79 of a heart attack.

Aaron Cance, a former bookseller at The King’s English in Salt Lake City, Utah, is opening a bookstore next week in nearby Sandy. The Printed Garden will offer a mix of new and gently used, out-of-print, and signed and rare books. 

ABA member stores that are not currently part of the IndieCommerce program can apply from now through February 29, 2016, for a chance to win one free year of IndieCommerce.

The Small Business Majority has presented Christin Evans of The Booksmith in San Francisco and Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, California, with a regional Small Business Advocate Award.

On November 28, nearly 500 independent bookstores across the country celebrated the third annual Indies First on Small Business Saturday. Stores reported a range of experiences at the culmination of the event, with the majority citing strong customer interest and engagement and some citing a rise in sales.

The Book Industry Charitable Foundation has launched a year-end fundraising campaign with the hopes of raising $10,000 to continue its work providing emergency financial assistance to booksellers in times of crisis.

Booksellers’ top Indie Next List pick for December is The Selected Poems of Donald Hall by the former U.S. Poet Laureate. Hall selected what he considers the best of his poems for this collection, representing 70 years’ work.

The latest IndieCommunication newsletter for IndieCommerce stores includes information about linking to regional holiday catalogs, Q&A webinars, and one-on-one sessions at Winter Institute 2016.

Several major publishers are once again offering expedited shipping to indie bookstores this holiday season and, in some cases, beyond. Here’s a look at previously announced programs from Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Perseus, and Simon & Schuster.

Monday, December 7, is the last day for owners and managers to register for Winter Institute 2016’’s four Advanced Learning Education sessions.

Boston initiative encourages shoppers to support small businesses; NetGalley shows support for Indies First; New Zealand to start taxing e-books from overseas retailers; A Moveable Feast sales spike after Paris terrorist attacks; Bookbuilders of Boston blog series spotlights indie bookstores

This holiday season, We Need Diverse Books is challenging booksellers to shine the spotlight on Margarita Engle’s Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music, an initiative to effect change through the power of the hand-sell.

An expanded array of downloadable fliers and shelf-talkers is now available to help booksellers promote all of the titles on the December Indie Next List — Indie Next Great Reads, Now in Paperback titles, and Revisit & Rediscover backlist favorites.