BEA Spotlight: An Impressive Lineup for Thursday 'Day of Education'

This week, the American Booksellers Association unveiled the complete lineup of presenters for its Thursday "Day of Education" at BookExpo America. The eagerly awaited follow-up to programming presented at last year's BEA and at January's Winter Institute will include 13 different education sessions (some repeated twice), presented by a range of expert retail strategists, professional booksellers, and ABA staff.

The full roster of presenters, several of whom were announced previously, includes:

• Science of Independent Bookselling: Catching and Keeping Customers: Paco Underhill, bestselling author, urban geographer, retail anthropologist, and founder of international research and consulting firm Envirosell
  
  
• Handselling: Customer Service with Results: ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz and Casey Coonerty of Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California
  
  
• Know Your Customer: Increase Sales: Meg Smith, Associate Director of Book Sense Marketing and ABA Director of Membership Marketing/Media Relations
  
  
• Retail Horizons -- Industry Benchmarks: Karen T. Knobloch, Senior Vice President, Member Services, The National Retail Federation
  
  
• Shop Local: Forming Business Alliances in Your Community: Moderated by ABA COO Oren J. Teicher; Panelists Stacy Mitchell, Researcher with the New Rules Project of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and Betsy Burton of The King's English in Salt Lake City
  
  
• Getting the Most Out of Your Website: Len Vlahos, Director of BookSense.com
  
  
• Independent Booksellers as Mavericks: William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre, authors of Mavericks at Work (HarperCollins)
  
  
• Improving Efficiency to Achieve Success: ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz
  
  
• Creating Effective E-Newsletters: Kevin O'Brien, Manager of Reseller Programs, Constant Contact; Panelists Kelly Justice of Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia, and Margie Scott Tucker of Books Inc. in San Francisco
  
  
• Creating Killer Events: Moderated by ABA COO Oren J. Teicher; Panelists Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books in Miami and Collette Morgan of Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis
  
  
• How to Be the Story: Developing and Implementing a Public Relations Plan: Roxanne Coady of RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut
  
  
• How to Do a Customer Survey: A Case Study: Len Vlahos, Director of BookSense.com, and Casey Coonerty of Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California
  
  
• Above the Treeline: John Rubin, founder and director of Above the Treeline

The Thursday "Day of Education" is free and open to all ABA member booksellers; however, advance registration, through BEA, is required. For complete session descriptions and more, visit www.bookweb.org/aba/convention/.