SIBA Show Promises the Hottest for the Coming Season

The 2008 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Fall Trade Show will be held from Friday, September 26, through Sunday, September 28, at the Marriott Renaissance and the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile Convention Center in Mobile, Alabama. Among the show's highlights are a full day of educational programming, the SIBA Supper, the Fire & Brimstone Barbecue, and The Retailer Place With Cookbook Corner. The American Booksellers Association's education sessions, sponsored by Ingram Book Group/Ingram Publisher Services, include "Connecting to Your Customers and Community With IndieBound," "ABA's E-Commerce Solution Users' Group," and the "Budgeting & Monitoring Workshop."

SIBA Executive Director Wanda Jewell said that she is "most excited about offering a Booksellers Shipping Center with PartnerShip, as this is a much requested benefit by Southern booksellers." (The shipping center will be open on Saturday and Sunday at the convention center.) She's also looking forward to the Saturday evening Author to Author Interview between Katherine Neville and Steven Berry. And, she added, "The Saturday breakfast with John Grogan and others, as well as the SIBA Supper and the Moveable Feast of Authors are all events that I am excited to offer booksellers." SIBA will also feature a Rep Around Breakfast on Sunday morning, "where reps will get to share passion, promotion, and predictions about their favorite titles."

Pre-trade show programming begins on Thursday, September 25, at the Marriott Renaissance with SIBA's "Bookseller School: Focus on Children's Books and Buy Local Efforts." For $75, three people per store can attend this all-day program, including a continental breakfast and box lunch, and featuring Heather Doss, Bookazine children's book buyer; Carla Jimenez, co-owner of Inkwood Books in Tampa, Florida, and a strong Local First advocate; and ABA Chief Program Officer Len Vlahos.

On Friday, the trade show education program begins and the new Retailer Place With Cookbook Corner, modeled on the ABA Lounge at BEA, opens at the Marriott Renaissance. At the Retailer Place, booksellers will be able to check e-mail, meet cookbook authors, have refreshments, and learn about Baker & Taylor's new website solution.

ABA's education programming on Friday, sponsored by Ingram Book Group/Ingram Publisher Services and presented by Vlahos and ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz, includes:

• ABA's E-Commerce Solution Users Group, 9:45 a.m. - 10:25 a.m.
  ABA's E-Commerce Solution is undergoing a major overhaul, planned for a fall 2008 release. The site is migrating to the open-source platform Drupal, which will provide users with new and improved administrative tools, better performance and reliability, and a shorter path to new features and functionality. Participants in the users group will have an opportunity to meet with and provide feedback to ABA's E-Commerce staff. (Non-participants are also welcome to attend.)
  
  
• Connecting to Your Customers and Community With IndieBound, 11:15 a.m. - 11:55 a.m.
  There is a clear sentiment in favor of localism that is revolutionizing consumer behavior. People are renewing their ties to friends, neighbors, and institutions in their cities and towns, choosing Main Street over malls, and embracing localism and sustainability movements of all types. This presents an extraordinary opportunity for independent booksellers and other independent retailers. IndieBound taps into this growing movement, creating new and interesting ways for independent booksellers and other independent businesses to better communicate their core strengths -- independence, passion, community -- to their customers. Share what you have done in your store with IndieBound promotional material, ways that you have connected with other independent businesses in your community, and hear about creative ways your colleagues have used IndieBound.

• Budgeting & Monitoring Workshop, 2:00 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.
  This program 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. Special attention will be paid to the control of cash flow and the information needed to obtain an operating line of credit. Through the use of a series of Excel worksheets, booksellers will be shown how to integrate a budgeting and monitoring system into their store operations. Special attention will be paid to issues relating to small- and medium-sized stores.

SIBA's offerings on Friday include "The Gen Z Reader: Understanding the New Reader in the Post Electronic Age"; "EESY CHIT: Easy, Effective Strategies That You Can Happily Implement Today (That Will Save You Crap-loads of Time & Money!)"; "Getting More Out of Your Children's Section"; the SIBA Supper; and a screening of Paperback Dreams, a documentary film about the contributions, historical significance, and struggles of Cody's Books in Berkeley and Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, California.

On Saturday and Sunday, all action moves to the Mobile Convention Center. Exhibits are open, and highlights of SIBA's author event programming include the Breakfast of Champions, the Children's Authors Lunch, the Fire & Brimstone SIBA Barbecue, the Moveable Feast of Authors, as well as author autographing on the show floor.

ABA will have a booth on the SIBA trade show floor, where booksellers can meet ABA staff, including Education Coordinator Jamie Rogers, and learn about IndieBound and the association's many other services and products. Information will also be available about the Winter Institute 4 (Wi4), to be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, from Thursday, January 29, through Sunday, February 1.

Booksellers can enter a raffle for a free trip to Wi4 (airfare and up to a two-night hotel stay for one person) by dropping a business card off at the ABA booth on the show floor. They can also enter the raffle a second time by updating their store profile via BookWeb.org. One winner will be chosen at random at the end of October from all entries received at the nine regional shows and via profile updates.

Registration materials, including ticket information and a full schedule of events, are available on the SIBA website, www.sibaweb.com/2008-trade-show. Questions about SIBA programming should be addressed to [email protected].

Questions and requests for information about ABA's participation at SIBA's trade show may be directed to ABA's Lisa Winn at [email protected]. --David Grogan