ABA Names 2010 Board Candidates; Opens Petition Process for Additional Candidates

At its winter meeting, the American Booksellers Association's Board of Directors nominated three director candidates to serve three-year terms (2010 - 2013) on the Board.

Booksellers nominated as candidates for the upcoming elections are Sarah Bagby of Watermark Books in Wichita, Kansas; Steve Bercu of BookPeople in Austin, Texas; and Tom Campbell of The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, North Carolina. Bercu and Campbell currently serve on the ABA Board and are both eligible for an additional three-year term. Leaving the ABA Board in June 2010 is Cathy Langer of Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver.

The Board selected Michael Tucker of Books Inc. in San Francisco and Becky Anderson of Anderson's Bookshops to serve a second one-year term as ABA President and Vice President/Secretary, respectively. Their names and those of director candidates will appear on the Board ballot, which will be sent to ABA members by the end of March, 60 days prior to the Annual Membership Meeting, to be held on Wednesday, May 26, at 4:00 p.m. at the Javits Convention Center during BookExpo America.

Under ABA's bylaws, in addition to candidates put forth by the Nominating Committee and approved by the Board, any bookstore member may submit a petition for a director candidate; there is a timeframe of approximately one month to circulate petitions to place names on the ballot. Upon receipt of a valid petition, the Nominating Committee will add the petitioned candidate's name to the Director ballot.

Should bookstore members wish to submit a petition, 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 19, 2010, to the 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, 2010; that is a minimum of 27 signatures. The petition must contain original signatures and the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of bookstore members in 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.

Serving on the Nominating Committee were chair and ABA Board member Ken White of the SFSU Bookstore in San Francisco; ABA Board member Betsy Burton of The King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Utah; former ABA President Gayle Shanks of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona; Judy Crosby of Island Books in Middletown, Rhode Island; and Matthew Norcross of McLean & Eakin Booksellers in Petoskey, Michigan.

To help BTW's coverage of the election process, if any bookstore member is working to circulate a petition, please send an e-mail to [email protected].