Industry News

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.

Powell's Recognized as Among the Web's Elite

Fairhope, Alabama, a city of approximately 12,000 residents, is in the midst of an ongoing fight to keep big box retailers, including Wal-Mart, out of its surrounding area. This past August, a group of concerned citizens -- including bookseller Karin Wilson of Fairhope's Page & Palette bookstore -- formed "A Fair Hope of Success," to ensure the continued viability of Fairhope's downtown businesses. "A Fair Hope" formed in response to rumors of a Wal-Mart opening in the area.

With just six weeks left until the start of the American Booksellers Association's inaugural Winter Institute, registration for the event continues, but rooms at California's Long Beach Hilton, the host hotel, are quickly disappearing.

The Winter Institute's comprehensive education program, which is free to all ABA member booksellers, both owners and staff, begins at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, January 26, and runs through 4:30 p.m. on Friday, January 27.

The deadline for retailers to submit claim forms in the Visa Check/MasterMoney antitrust class action lawsuit is Wednesday, December 28, 2005. Class members -- retailers that accepted Visa and MasterCard debit cards between October 25, 1992, and July 31, 2003, have until then to return the forms, which were mailed to them at the end of September. December 28 is also the deadline for retailers to challenge the estimated cash payment amount on the claim form.

The deadline for retailers to submit claim forms in the Visa Check/MasterMoney antitrust class action lawsuit is Wednesday, December 28, 2005. Class members -- retailers that accepted Visa and MasterCard debit cards between October 25, 1992, and July 31, 2003, have until then to return the forms, which were mailed to them at the end of September. December 28 is also the deadline for retailers to challenge the estimated cash payment amount on the claim form.

Preliminary figures recently released by the Bureau of the Census, Current Retail Trade Branch indicate that October bookstore sales were 5.1 percent below those for the same period in 2004, marking the second worst decline of the year so far. Year-to-date sales at bookstores are down 2.5 percent.

In contrast, overall retail sales continued an upward trend. Overall retail sales of $345 billion for October 2005 were 5.8 percent ahead of the $326 billion reported in October 2004.

Bookseller Kathleen Caldwell pays tribute to Debi Echlin, owner of A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland, California, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, who died in her sleep on Thanksgiving Day. In this column, which originally appeared in The Montclarion newspaper on December 9, Caldwell meaningfully says Debi Echlin was "the perfect combination of big sister, mentor, and best friend."

Bookstore Tourism, a grassroots effort to promote and support independent bookstores by marketing them as tourist destinations, has continued to grow into a nationwide campaign. And now its architect, Larry Portzline, a Harrisburg-based writer for the Pennsylvania State Senate, is creating a nonprofit organization to promote the concept: the National Council on Bookstore Tourism (NCBT).

Former bookseller Hank Jones developed TitleSmart, www.titlesmart.com, an informational web tool for booksellers and librarians, to provide a single wide-ranging source for easy access to information about major book reviews and book publicity. "From talking with fellow booksellers and from my own experience, I knew there was a search tool needed that could help my store and other stores to more efficiently track down titles for customers," said Jones.

With the U.S. House of Representatives now back in session and the Senate due back in session on Monday, December 12, the final push to amend the USA Patriot Act to protect reader privacy has moved into its final stages.

The PDF files of the January Book Sense Notables fliers and shelf-talkers, featuring booksellers' comments, are now available on BookWeb's Picks page, along with the full list of January Book Sense Picks titles.

Over 30 bookseller scholarship winners will attend the American Booksellers Association's first annual Winter Institute, to be held in Long Beach, California, on January 26 and 27. Twenty-two of the scholarships, covering airfare and hotel costs, are sponsored by 11 Book Sense Publisher Partners. Additional scholarships are sponsored by ABA.

The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA), the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART), and Book Sense have teamed up to create a new promotion to encourage BART riders to visit their local independent bookstores. On Tuesday, December 13, fifty thousand fliers -- which feature an area-specific Book Sense Picks List, along with a coupon for $10 off the Picks titles at participating stores -- will be distributed at six BART stations.

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.