ABA Town Hall at BEA: Booksellers Address Minimum Wage, Health Care, Localism

The American Booksellers Association’s BookExpo America Town Hall meeting was held on Thursday, May 12, just prior to the association’s Annual Membership Meeting.

Facilitated by ABA President Betsy Burton of The King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Vice President Robert Sindelar of Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, Washington, along with the full ABA Board, the Town Hall meeting provided booksellers with an open forum in which to share their comments, questions, and concerns about the association and the book industry at large with the ABA Board and staff.

Burton and Sindelar were joined by board directors Sarah Bagby of Watermark Books and Café in Wichita, Kansas; John Evans of DIESEL, A Bookstore, with three locations in California; Jamie Fiocco of Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Valerie Koehler of Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, Texas; Pete Mulvihill of Green Apple Books in San Francisco, California; Matthew Norcross of McLean & Eakin Booksellers in Petoskey, Michigan; Annie Philbrick of Bank Square Books in Mystic, Connecticut, and Savoy Bookshop & Café in Westerly, Rhode Island; and Jonathon Welch of Talking Leaves Books in Buffalo, New York.

Welcoming booksellers to Chicago, which last hosted BookExpo America in 2004, BEA Show Director Brien McDonald said, “We’re off to a really good start … We’ve had a really great turnout by [independent bookstores], and, by far, you are our most valuable attendees.”

Christin Evans, co-owner of San Francisco’s The Booksmith, opened the Town Hall discussion with a comment about several recent meetings she had with elected officials and policy makers in Washington, D.C. She noted that among the topics discussed was minimum wage, and that she was encouraged to urge fellow small businesses to reach out to elected officials in their area to advocate for a sustainable minimum wage implementation.

“We’d love to see a national minimum wage done in a way that gives money to working people that are going to spend it in our stores,” said Evans. “Intellectually, it’s tough for us to see how that’s going to impact our businesses directly, but I think, in the long term, it will be really great for our business and also our economy.”

Evans also inquired about the status of a test ABA launched last October on IndieBound.org as a way to increase traffic to member stores and their e-commerce sites. The test allows consumers to purchase books directly through IndieBound.org in an effort to improve their online shopping experience for an initial purchase, and then directs customers to several independent bookstores in their area for future purchases.

The ABA’s Digital Task Force recently reconvened to discuss the test results, particularly concerns that the website might compete with member stores or hinder ABA’s work on other programs or services.

“We do not fear those two things anymore based on these results,” said Sindelar, who added that the ABA Board had resolved to continue the test and evaluate it moving forward.

Lucy Kogler, co-owner of Talking Leaves Bookstore in Buffalo, New York, addressed the inclusion of Scientology-related publicity materials in ABA’s monthly White Box mailings. “If we’re getting money from Scientology to put the leaflets in there, that’s when I have an issue,” said Kogler. “If we’re not taking money from them to distribute their literature, then I understand it’s a free speech issue.”

ABA CEO Oren Teicher responded, “We do, in fact, make the White Box available to publishers and, in our First Amendment philosophy, we do not make judgments at all about the content of what gets included.”

Sindelar said the issue would be added to the agenda of the Booksellers Advisory Council for discussion.

Bob Baird, owner of The Book Bin in Corvallis, Oregon, also spoke to the minimum wage matter and noted the different sets of issues booksellers face in urban areas versus rural areas. In Oregon, said Baird, a recent ballot measure enacted a tiered minimum wage. “I would like to encourage any of you who are looking at minimum wage issues to look at the Oregon model as being superior to a one-baseball-cap-fits-all.”

Burton invited the membership to share any information relating to minimum wage with the American Booksellers Association, especially considering the different challenges presented based on booksellers’ locale.

Genevieve Fuller of Towne Center Books in Pleasanton, California, expressed concerns for bookstore employees, most especially in regard to health insurance. “I would appreciate seeing from the ABA some sort of conversation about how the ABA can help their member bookstores create affordable and practical plans for providing health insurance to their employees,” she said.

“There is nobody in this organization more frustrated about our inability to be able to offer health insurance to our member stores,” responded Teicher. “The current law does not allow us to do that in a way that’s affordable.” He noted, though, that ABA would continue to advocate on the issue and look for possible solutions.

Philbrick also suggested that booksellers make use of the services of the Book Industry Charitable Foundation if emergencies arise.

Bill Petrocelli of Book Passage in Corte Madera, California, commented on the book business being the only industry in America that has the retail price of an item printed on the product and said that practice should be stopped.

Gayle Shanks of Changing Hands in Tempe and Phoenix, Arizona, said she’d like to see more informal polls taken to gauge booksellers’ thoughts on various issues. “I think that would be a feedback loop that would be good for all of us,” she said, and Burton agreed.

Matt Keliher of Subtext Books in St. Paul, Minnesota, expressed the need for a program to streamline publisher invoices and payments processing, and Burton said that ABA is working to replicate the Batch program for booksellers. In use in England for 15 years, Batch is a centralized online invoice payment and data system.

Joe Hight, owner of Best of Books in Edmond, Oklahoma, asked about what has transpired since the release of the Civic Economics study “Amazon and Empty Storefronts” at Winter Institute earlier this year.

“That study, we believe, is the beginning of a series of things ABA is committed to do to help educate ourselves, our industry, our customers, and certainly the public about the overall impact of Amazon on the economy,” said Teicher, who added that the study will be updated with more current data and may be replicated in other global markets.

“We appreciate any effort that any of you can make in informing like-minded indie businesses in your community about these issues because we need help in getting more people to be aware,” added Teicher, directing booksellers to the New Localism Toolkit, which offers sample letters to elected officials and other resources to help booksellers educate staff, customers, officials, and the media about the localism movement.

Kenny Brechner of Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers in Farmington, Maine, stressed that many of the issues being discussed at the Town Hall need to be considered in tandem. “We need to bundle all these ideas together,” he said. “When we talk about the big need that we have to get public will on board with the need for these kinds of regulations we need to include all these issues together in a more seamless narrative.”

Octavia Books co-owner Tom Lowenburg noted that Amazon fired its Louisiana affiliates rather than collect state sales tax after Louisiana passed an e-fairness bill, which went into effect April 1. Lowenburg proposed urging state governors or city officials to request that state entities only do business with companies that have nexus in the state of Louisiana and remit and collect sales tax.

At Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California, owner Casey Coonerty Protti is hoping to provide more professional development opportunities to help frontline booksellers feel they are moving along a career path. Protti requested that ABA look to provide training outside of Winter Institute and ABA educational events to make it accessible to booksellers.

ABA has tested those waters by offering a series of IndieCommerce webinars that were reasonably well-attended, said Teicher. “We can get better at being able to provide education online ... We’re going to continue to try to grow and convert some of the educational offerings we have to create an online component. We hope we can get many of you to participate and give us feedback.”