Winter Institute 2023

Join Ingram for an informative workshop with essential tips and techniques for using ipage®. Whether you’re new to ipage® or an experienced user, gain a clearer understanding of our platform’s full capabilities so you will spend less time navigating and more time selling. In this session, you will learn how to refine your searches and order, understand tracking within ipage®, and learn more about Direct-to-Home ordering.

The rights of readers and the importance of representation in books is critical to the work of independent bookstores. The wave of book bans threaten these rights and these values as an orchestrated movement attempting to silence historically marginalized voices and experiences. As authors, publishers, and booksellers are under constant attack from random and targeted book bans, ABA has assembled a diverse group to discuss the effects of these bans.
Heather Hall from Green Feather Book Company; Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer ; Laura DeLaney from Rediscovered Books; and Kendrick Washington, Policy Advocacy Director of the Seattle ACLU, will share their experiences as well as their insight and wisdom on how to deal with an increasingly pervasive occurrence. The discussion will be moderated by Ray Daniels, Chief Communications Officer of ABA. Gather here to understand first hand what is at stake when book bans happen in your community and how you can respond or even prevent them.

For people in historically marginalized communities, having a space to exist, work, play, and connect can be a powerful thing. There are many ways to honor your community by creating space, and this panel will feature four booksellers who have done just that. You will leave this session with great hope for the future and promise of bookselling and with new ideas for creating space for the communities to which you belong.

A school partnership is an important asset to any bookstore. It strengthens the community, introduces books to younger readers, generates future customers, and supports a bookstore’s bottom line. This session is a bookstore-presented panel on how to best establish school connections from square one. Booksellers will learn first steps to take to begin a healthy partnership, key roles in school administration to get to know, how to work with teachers, and what events and means of support a bookstore can provide to create trust and put the store front of mind when opportunities arise. Presented by the ABC Children’s Group for all booksellers.

This session will offer insight into the small data sets you didn’t know you had and how to mine data to better focus your efforts. Information from POS reports, one-question customer surveys, and even understanding store traffic patterns can make the difference between a good day and a great one.

A big challenge for all bookstores is the volume and management of publisher invoices. In this session, you’ll hear from Batch colleagues and current Batch users about how they save time and money using Batch to manage their invoices and prepare payments to publishing partners. The session will include discussion and demonstrations with focus on how Batch:
- Automatically and electronically organizes invoices to reduce paperwork and free up time.
- Provides access to invoice information 24x7, enabling you to manage invoices when it’s most convenient for you.
- Provides electronic invoices, allowing you to verify shipments and raise claims for damages or shortages at the point of delivery.
- Allows payments to be prepared and remittances received and stored electronically.
- Links with QuickBooks; enabling automated entry of invoice data directly into QuickBooks.

Gen Z — ages 10 to 25 years old — is the largest population in the world. Come to this fun panel where members of Gen Z will share their thoughts on merchandise, marketing, and partnerships that engage this essential group of readers with buying power. Presented by the ABC Children’s Group for all booksellers.

Whether you refer to them as sidelines, non-book, or gift merchandise, they're important to the profitability and customer experience for many bookstores. Come to this panel to gain insight into the process of curating, merchandising, and selling sidelines.

The ABA Community Forum is a reimagined Town Hall with the same opportunities for members to be heard and more opportunity for constructive discussions about our industry. The full ABA Board will respond to questions and comments from all booksellers; booksellers who would like to send questions in advance can email [email protected]

In Ani Di Franco’s debut picture book, The Knowing (Rise x Penguin Workshop), the iconic independent musician captures the awareness that we’re all meant for something greater than the sum of our parts. This knowing is integral to the spirit of independent bookstores and record stores, which operate as agents of cultural change on both local and national levels. And it is this knowing that compels each of us to dedicate our lives to championing the work of musicians and writers in our stores. In this once-in-a-lifetime closing keynote, Courtney Wallace, ABA’s Program Director of Independent Bookstore Day, will lead a conversation between Ani Di Franco, Carrie Colliton, co-founder of Record Store Day, and Robert Sindelar, managing partner of Third Place Books in Seattle. Together, they will discuss the intersection of independent bookstores and record stores, as well as the influence that independent retail spaces have on society.

The last few years have revealed the realities of the impact of long-term stress and burnout. Join this conversation with Dr. Corey Yeager, author of How Am I Doing?: 40 Conversations to Have with Yourself, (HarperCollins Christian) and Christine Onorati, ABA board member, bookseller and therapist, as they discuss skills to manage self-care. Topics will include communicating your needs, respecting your limitations, normalizing conversations about mental health and overall well-being, and more.

Note: For this workshop you will need a free Google account. The session will use Google Classroom. Please bring a device you can easily work on.

If you attended the social media workshop yesterday, welcome back! If you didn’t attend the social media workshop yesterday, you are still welcome. This session will offer insight on how to translate your social media analytics from Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook into a personalized and relevant marketing plan to improve your social media engagement, traffic, and sales. To get the most out of this workshop, review your social analytics data on the platforms listed ahead of time. (All)

Compensation is the foundation of supporting employees. In addition to paying a living wage, there are creative non-monetary benefits that stores can offer employees to support them and to demonstrate their value. Facilitated by bookstore owners who have had some success with exploring, building, and launching creative benefit programs for their staff, this idea exchange is an opportunity to crowdsource solutions and share successes. (Managers)

“...poetry began when somebody walked off of a savanna or out of a cave and looked up at the sky with wonder and said, ‘Ahhh.’ That was the first poem.” — (Lucille Clifton)
Take a moment to experience the “ahhh.” Stop by the Poetry Theater to watch a video of poets reading their work.

Heads or Tails is back! Play for a chance to win $500 and support your fellow booksellers at the same time!

Donate $20 for a blinkee pin (a.k.a a chance) to win or $35 for two blinkee pins (a.k.a. two chances) to win the grand prize of $500. Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Arcadia Publishing, all proceeds will help a bookseller.

Use this link https://secure.givelively.org/donate/book-industry-charitable-foundation... to purchase your blinkee pins ahead of time and pick up your blinkee pin from a Binc representative at the Winter Institute. Binc staff and volunteers will be on-site at registration and the Vendor Showcase.