High Marks for Education at a Productive BEA

The venue was new, but many familiar faces were traversing the multilevel Washington Convention Center from Thursday to Sunday throughout last week's BookExpo America. This year, 573 ABA member stores were preregistered for the show, representing approximately one-third of all member bookstores, making this the largest percentage of total membership at the trade show in recent memory. In addition, among the attendees were 57 prospective booksellers who had successfully completed the ABA-sponsored Booksellers School (facilitated by Donna Paz and Mark Kaufman of Paz & Associates).

Booksellers who spoke to BTW at the show were lavish in their praise for ABA's expanded education programming, and many smaller stores found great opportunities to meet with publishers and to confer with other booksellers. Many ABA members mentioned the comfort of the ABA/Book Sense Lounge, where they relaxed after long walks on the trade floor. Others just said they love to talk books, anywhere, anytime.

Chauni Haslet of All for Kids Books & Music in Seattle, Washington, who is a BEA veteran, told BTW, "What I love about BEA is the networking. I get many ideas from other booksellers."

Elizabeth Houghton Barden of Big Hat Books in Indianapolis also mentioned networking. She found the industry-wide exchange of information to be one of the most exciting aspects of BEA. "One way or another, your question always get asked, even if you're not doing the asking," she said. "And, one way or another, your question always gets answered, whether it's by another bookseller, a publisher, or a presenter. By all of us being together, the common knowledge rises to the top."

Margaret Neville of The King's English in Salt Lake City commented, "I love to stand around and talk to people who are reading."

ABA education sessions, beginning Thursday morning, drew record numbers of participants and many positive reviews. Rene Martin, events coordinator at Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, North Carolina, termed the education line-up, "the best and most informative I've ever been to -- very organized and very professional."

Thursday's morning session "Handselling: Customer Service with Results," presented by ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz and Casey Coonerty of Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California, covered hiring and training great handsellers, as well as improving handselling methods. Heidi Nielsen of A Room of One's Own in Madison, Wisconsin, called the session extremely useful. "I appreciated how [Domnitz and Coonerty] said to recommend Book A, but to always have Book B and C ready." Nielsen also found helpful the techniques of practicing handselling during staff meetings and training staff to feel confident handselling books they have not yet read.

Mary Gay Shipley of That Bookstore in Blytheville, in Blytheville, Arkansas, who is no stranger to BEA, planned to make some changes to the store's BookSense.com site based on "Getting the Most Out of Your Website," led by BookSense.com Director Len Vlahos. "I found out that we need to change some things on our site so it's not the same all the time," said Shipley. "We don't need to change the navigation bar or the logo, but we've had a little history of our store on the [homepage] for a long time, and we need to put something else up." Shipley also said she wanted to more thoroughly connect the store and the website.

Others, including Joan Barberich, one of the four worker/owners at Food for Thought in Amherst, Massachusetts, also found much to learn from Vlahos in the session on "How to Do a Customer Survey." "I attended the survey workshop and was not expecting it to be so good," she said. "I had already done some of the groundwork [for a survey], and now feel ready to take the next step."

Another thing that Barberich feels very positive about is Constant Contact, the web-based e-mail marketing service. "It's new, it's great. I'm like a kid in a candy store," she told BTW.

Both Arlene Lynes, owner of Read Between the Lynes in Woodstock, Illinois, and Leah Brock, a buyer at Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle, found the education sessions, including Thursday's plenary session, "The Science of Independent Bookselling: Catching and Keeping Customers," presented by Paco Underhill, enlightening. And both were also very impressed with the ABA Lounge. "I went there to get an autographed copy of Water for Elephants," Lynes said. "It was really a nice refuge," Brock added. "They even had refreshments."

Lynes, whose store will be one year old in July, found her previous participation in ABACUS essential. "I can't understand why anyone wouldn't do it," she said. She had attended the sessions "Know Your Customer" and "Independent Booksellers as Mavericks," and found both useful. "We're just trying to survive. We're always looking for authors and ideas for events."

Many booksellers left BEA this year with visions of "Killer Events" dancing in their heads. Lindsey McGuirk, events coordinator of Village Books in Bellingham, Washington, appreciated the suggestions by panelist Collette Morgan of Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis, at the "Creating Killer Events" session. "Collette had really fun ideas," said McGuirk. "She's someone I'll definitely keep in touch with. And she's not afraid to do non-author events. She had one event that was a 'Battle of the Garage Bands' for young teenage boys. The winners got two hours in a recording studio. It sounded like a fun event."

Annie Crane of Lift Bridge Book Shop in Brockport, New York, also planned on borrowing Morgan's event concepts. "I loved her 'Mummify Your Barbie' event. You could tie in all sorts of Egyptian themes." Crane said that in addition to suggestions for events, the panel, which also included Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books in Miami, distributed a "very practical" checklist that included to-do lists for various stages of planning and hosting the event before, during, and after. "This is very useful to make sure you're not forgetting something -- which can easily happen," said Crane.

After attending "How to Be the Story: Developing and Implementing a Public Relations Plan," with presenter Roxanne Coady of R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut, Quail Ridge's Martin told BTW, "I think I can go home and do a P.R. plan myself."

Eric Gesell of Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops in Milwaukee said that after BEA he planned to immediately implement one of the tactics Domnitz recommended during "Improving Efficiency to Achieve Success." Gesell explained, "In one section, Avin talked about creating a spreadsheet that includes what you do during every moment of the day, and then taking a look at where your time is being spent." Gesell planned on creating one and asking the assistant manager to do the same. "I think both of us will be stunned to see where all the time is going," he said.

Many booksellers, from communities of all sizes, mentioned the utility of meeting publishers and authors face-to-face. Geoffrey Jenning and Steve Shapiro of Rainy Day Books in Fairway, Kansas, told BTW that they come to meet new people, particularly publicists, "who change frequently," and to let everyone know "how much we like to sell books." Shapiro said that by sitting next to Steve Berry (The Templar Legacy, Ballantine) at the Book Sense Luncheon on Friday "[he] now can put a name to the face and [he will] be better at selling his books because of it."

And, of course, no bookseller ever leaves BEA empty handed. One Washington taxi driver was overheard asking an attendee, "What kind of convention is this? The bags are so heavy!"

Everyone had a special pick or two. The favorite of A Room of One's Own's Nielsen, like many other booksellers, was the number-one pick on the June Book Sense List, Water for Elephants (Algonquin). Another of her picks was the memoir told in graphic novel-style Fun Home (Houghton) by Alison Bechdel, the creator of the syndicated cartoon Dykes to Watch Out For. Nielsen said that A Room of One's Own was collaborating with three other feminist bookstores -- Women & Children First in Chicago, Amazon Bookstore Cooperative in Minneapolis, and Broad Vocabulary Books in Milwaukee -- to host a Midwest reading for Bechdel, who happened to be signing her book at BEA. "I just talked to her," said Nielsen. "She was really touched" to learn the stores were pooling their resources for the reading.

Harry W. Schwartz' Gesell is looking forward to selling Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope (Crown). All For Kids' Haslett told BTW she was excited about Kirby Larson's Hattie Big Sky (Delacorte Books for Young Readers), due in October 2006. "It's historical adventure, not fluffy romance." Rainy Day Books' Jenning said emphatically, "It's Doug Marlette's Magic Time: A Novel," coming from FSG in September 2006.

Reflecting the feelings of many booksellers at BEA, Vicky McNeil, manager and buyer for Watermark Book Company in Anacortes, Washington, said, "[Even after 12 years,] I still enjoy it -- I'm still learning stuff." -- Nomi Schwartz and Karen Schechner

Watch for more BEA coverage in upcoming editions of BTW, and if you missed BTW's daily reports from the show, go to www.bookweb.org/aba/convention.