Idea Exchange This Week

Every week dozens of booksellers seek and share advice and information about bookselling and the book industry on BookWeb's Idea Exchange Forums. Here, BTW presents a look at some of this week's topics, with the hope that more booksellers will join in.

In the General Forum, which provides ABA member booksellers with an opportunity to network and to benefit from the perspectives that could only be gained from other booksellers, this week's discussions included:

• Changes in Ingram's shipping policies
• A query about suppliers of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender inventory
• Ways to handle a bad author who wants to do a book signing
• And a search for a book for boys similar to The Care & Keeping of You from American Girl books

The "Ask ABA" Forum provides booksellers with the opportunity to ask questions or make comments directed towards the ABA Board and staff. This week's topics included:

• A suggestion about ways to increase BTW's Classified Ad viewership
• A query about the possibility of ABA offering group health insurance to members
• And a request for help in locating a vendor

The "Ask BookSense.com" forum provides an opportunity to ask questions of the BookSense.com staff, as well as to discuss concerns and to find out how other booksellers are using the e-commerce site. This week, one bookseller has a query regarding Levenger and Docurama banners on the site.

And on the Inventory Control Forum, an old thread requesting to hear from booksellers who love their systems had some new activity.

The Idea Exchange Forums are open to ABA bookstore and provisional members only. (Booksellers who do not already have a BookWeb Account will need to create one -- to do so, click here.) The greater the number of booksellers participating in the forums, the more useful they become as an educational tool for the whole independent bookselling community.