The ABA’s 9th annual Winter Institute in Seattle last week once again drew a sellout crowd of more than 500 enthusiastic booksellers, with almost 40 percent of attendees — and 60 bookstores — present for the first time. Those independent booksellers had reason for optimism, as ceo Oren Teicher said at the first of two rep picks’ luncheons on Wednesday. After showing an 8 percent gain in sales at ABA stores in 2012, “we have held on to virtually all of those gains in 2013,” Teicher noted. (In a follow-up email, Teicher explained he kept his statistics “somewhat vague overall” […]