Great Lakes Booksellers Take a New York Trip

Several members of the Great Lakes Booksellers Association (GLBA) participated in the regional's "Take Me to New York Trip" last week, to meet with marketing and publicity representatives at major New York publishers. The booksellers are selected each year, based on their applications, according to Jim Dana, GLBA executive director, who accompanies the group of three to five stores, for the weeklong stay in New York City.

GLBA started the program in 2003 to help stores find out more about the marketing and publicity side of the business and to introduce themselves to significant members of the New York publishing community. The GLBA solicits booksellers who are "ready to take their operation to the next level, who are committed to doing author and other special events, and who want more attention from publishers."

Booksellers pay their own expenses and must prepare presentations emphasizing their stores' unique qualities, to be repeated at each meeting with publishers.

This year's participating booksellers were Lake Forest Book Store in Lake Forest, Illinois; River Bank Books & Music in Grand Rapids, Michigan; Shrine of the Black Madonna Cultural Center & Bookstore in Detroit, Michigan; and Tree House Books in Holland, Michigan.

The booksellers met with Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hyperion, Time Warner, Random House, Workman, Von Holtzbrinck, Scholastic, and Penguin Putnam.

Debra Lambers, owner of River Bank Books & Music and the Book Nook & Java Shop, told BTW, "The trip was hectic, fun, and I don't know yet how rewarding it will be. It certainly opens opportunities for communication. The purpose of the visit for River Bank Books & Music (RBBM) was to introduce our newest location in downtown Grand Rapids. RBBM is perfectly located for corporate lunches that include authors as speakers. We have also developed a strong reputation at our sister store for energetic author events and visits."

Lambers continued, "I was happy to put faces with the voices, as I have dealt with many of the publishers and publicists via phone and e-mail over the years."

Michele Lonergan, owner of Tree House Books, said that her mission was to convince the publishers that Holland, Michigan, was a viable place to send their authors. "We were able to forge personal relationships to facilitate both author tours and authorless events," she explained. "I think we served as kind of a focus group for some publishers, who asked us lots of questions about events. We also learned a lot about the publishers' concerns and what's important to them."

She already considers the trip a success since publishers "were very forthcoming about wanting to send authors to the Midwest. They were very receptive when we described Holland as only a half hour from Grand Rapids and two hours from Chicago."

Since arriving home, Lonergan told BTW, "I've already received six e-mails from publicists who want to send authors. I'm thrilled." --Nomi Schwartz