ABA Board Candidate Petition Deadline March 20

Candidates for the American Booksellers Association's 2009 Board of Directors elections, as recommended by the Nominating Committee and approved by the Board, are Betsy Burton of The King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Utah; Becky Anderson of Anderson's Bookshops in Naperville, Illinois; and Beth Puffer of Bank Street Bookstore in New York City. Anderson and Puffer currently serve on the Board and are both eligible for an additional three-year term. In addition to the candidates approved by the Board, ABA's bylaws stipulate that bookstore members can submit petitions to place the names of additional director candidates on the ballot.

If any bookstore members wish to submit petitions, the following apply:

• A candidate must be an employee or owner of an ABA member bookstore. The member bookstore must be in good standing, and the individual candidate must have at least three years' experience in a bookstore-member company.

• Each petition can present only one candidate.

• All petitions must be submitted by March 20, 2009, to Chair, ABA Nominating Committee, c/o ABA, 200 White Plains Rd., Tarrytown, NY 10591.

• The names on the petition in support of the candidate must reflect at least two percent of ABA Bookstore Members as of January 1, 2009; that is a minimum of 30 signatures. The petition must contain original signatures, the name of the ABA member bookstore, address, and telephone number.

• The names on the petition in support of the candidate must come from at least five states, with representatives of no one state constituting more than 50 percent of the total number of petition signatures.

Upon receipt of a valid petition, the Nominating Committee will add the candidate's name to the ballot sent to ABA membership in late March, 60 days prior to the ABA Annual Membership Meeting at BookExpo America.

In related news, ABA is asking members for permission to send their Board ballots and details of a Bylaws change via electronic means. Booksellers can give ABA permission to send the materials electronically by completing a simple form available on BookWeb.org. (Read related story.)