Winter Institute Welcomes Seven Publisher Sponsors

Seven Book Sense Publisher Partners have become the newest sponsors of the American Booksellers Association's first annual Winter Institute, to be held on Thursday, January 26, and Friday, January 27, 2006, in Long Beach, California. Financial support from HarperCollins, Hyperion, Random House, Scholastic, Time Warner Book Group, and Workman will help to defray the cost of the Institute's special event functions and is underwriting the special hotel room rate at the Long Beach Hilton for Institute participants. In addition, publisher Thomson Peterson's has agreed to sponsor two Winter Institute bookseller scholarships, covering hotel and airfare.

"On behalf of the ABA, it's exciting and gratifying to see the strong response from our Publisher Partners for this initial Winter Institute," said Book Sense Marketing Director Mark Nichols. "I'm confident that both publishers and booksellers will benefit greatly from this experience."

Other sponsors of the Winter Institute are BookExpo America and wholesalers Baker & Taylor and Ingram Book Group.

The Winter Institute, which is open to all ABA member booksellers -- owners and staff -- free of charge, will include all of ABA's education sessions from this past June's BookExpo America, as well as two new sessions developed in response to bookseller input gathered through ABA's 2006 Education Survey. Designed to serve new and seasoned booksellers alike, the program will cover everything from budgeting and monitoring to reevaluating payroll expenses, from understanding best co-op practices to buying and selling non-book products.

A special hotel rate of $89 is available for three nights, from Wednesday, January 25, through Friday, January 27. To receive the special rate, hotel reservations must be made by November 15. Reservations may be made by calling (800) 445-8667 and asking for the "ABA Education Institute" block of rooms or through Hilton's online reservation form, available through the Winter Institute registration page at www.bookweb.org/institute. (The three-letter group/convention code -- "ABA" -- must be used to receive the $89 room rate.)

ABA welcomes additional publisher sponsorship for the Winter Institute. Interested publishers should contact Nichols at [email protected] or (800) 637-0037, ext. 6640.

For more information about the Winter Institute, go to www.bookweb.org/education/institute. Questions and comments should be addressed to ABA's associate director of programming, Kristen Gilligan, at (800) 637-0037, ext. 6613 or at [email protected].