BEA Spotlight: Saturday ABA & ABFFE Programming

Among the highlights of the American Booksellers Association's programming scheduled for Saturday, May 20, at this year's BookExpo America are a reprise of the popular "Budgeting & Monitoring" seminar; a meeting of the Above the Treeline Users Group; and the panel presentation "Coping With Disaster: What to Do When Catastrophe Strikes." The day also features "Threats to Press Freedom in the War on Terrorism," sponsored by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and others.

Budgeting & Monitoring

On Saturday from 9:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. in Room 150B, ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz will present the educational seminar "Budgeting & Monitoring." This program, which was previously presented at forums and educational workshops across the country, examines how bookstores, like other businesses, are best operated within a system of financial controls that allow the owner/manager to predict performance and then measure outcomes against those predictions. Through the use of a series of Excel worksheets (available to ABA members on BookWeb), booksellers will be shown how to integrate such a system into their store operations. Special attention will be paid to those factors that are the drivers of profitability and success and issues relating to small- and medium-sized stores. This session is open to all ABA bookstore members and Bookseller School registrants.

Above the Treeline Users Group Meeting

From 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. in Room 144C, Above the Treeline Director John Rubin will discuss the latest developments and enhancements to this online software product, designed to help bookstores improve finances by optimizing inventory selection. There will also be a question-and-answer period. Current users, as well as those interested in learning more about Above the Treeline and the special offer for ABA member booksellers, are encouraged to attend.

Coping With Disaster: What to Do When Catastrophe Strikes

From 1:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. in Room 150A, BEA attendees are invited to come hear a panel of experts discuss the devastation in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and what it means for America. This session will offer suggestions for dealing with disaster-preparedness and reflections on how the hurricanes of 2005 have changed the lives of millions of people.

Participants include the authors of Disaster: Hurricane Katrina & the Failure of Homeland Security (Henry Holt), Robert Block and Christopher Cooper; Dr. Irwin Redlener, author of Americans at Risk: Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Need to Do Now (Knopf); and bookseller Scott Naugle, the owner of Pass Christian Books, in Pass Christian, Mississippi, which was destroyed by the hurricane.

Block also covers the Department of Homeland Security for the Wall Street Journal and is a former foreign correspondent who has reported on terrorism and war from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Cooper is a White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and a former political reporter at the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Dr. Redlener is director of Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness and founder of the Children's Health Fund's Operation Assist, which in the first six months after Hurricane Katrina saw more than 13,000 patients at over 35 sites, including patients in Mississippi and Louisiana and evacuees in Houston, Dallas, and Austin, Texas.

As president of the Pass Christian Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Executive Committee of the Coast Chamber, Naugle is intimately involved in the Gulf Coast rebuilding process. He writes frequently for The Sun Herald, Mobile Register, and Louisiana Literature.

Threats to Press Freedom in the War on Terrorism

From 3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. in Room 150B, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression will present a discussion by a distinguished panel of journalists and authors who will examine threats to press freedom and how they diminish the ability of the American people to monitor the activities of the government.

Panelists are Howell Raines, former executive editor of the New York Times and author of The One That Got Away: A Memoir (Scribner); Myra MacPherson, a former Washington Post reporter and author of All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone (Scribner); and syndicated cartoonist Doug Marlette (Magic Time, Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

The discussion will explore how the threats to a free press are growing as the U.S. government pursues the war on terrorism. The program is co-sponsored by the American Library Association's Freedom to Read Foundation and the Association of American Publishers' Freedom to Read Committee.

Saturday's events will be capped by BEA's Book Industry Foundation Benefit featuring comedians Bob Newhart and Paula Poundstone. Proceeds from the event support the work of ABFFE and AAP's Get Caught Reading campaign. (See related story.)

For more about BEA and ABA programming, go to www.bookweb.org/aba/convention/.