At the ABA’s annual general meeting, ceo Oren Teicher called attention to independent bookstores’ “impressive resurgence” and the association’s expanding initiatives over the past twelve months. Teicher called attention to “significant investment in technology, especially for IndieCommerce”; an expansion of Winter Institute as well as the Children’s Institute; the “successful debut” of Independent Bookstore Day; and the Indies First and Indies Introduce program. “Though we are not there yet, we are making progress on decoupling ‘endangered’ from indie bookstore!” As reported earlier in the week, ABA members now operate more than 2200 bookstores, with increased sales for 47 of 52 […]
BEA15
BEA, Day One: View From The Floor, Rooftop, Stage
There’s a danger in ascribing a general mood to a trade show after a single day (never mind that publications do it all the time, and will do so in the future) but the words that come to my mind are “pleasantly discombobulating.” The wifi was free and worked, for the most part (we’ll see about that today.) The show floor, an hour or so after opening at the later-than-usual 1 PM time, was full of people but nowhere near capacity. Members of the delegation from China seemed as content to mingle as they did to take pictures of the […]
BEA: Executives Talk Digital Integration at IDPF
A trio of executives took the stage at IDPF Wednesday morning to discuss the many ways in which digital initiatives have affected their work. Macmillan Higher Education & New Ventures ceo Ken Michaels spoke first about the STEM customer: “Reading today is about engaging, doing, interacting on different channels, in bits and its entirety.” With increasing anxiety about being away from one’s smartphone, Michaels said, mobility must be present in all layers, in real-time, in the cloud. “We have an opportunity to improve learning opportunities for students. It’s a moral obligation that all of us in this room carry as […]
ABA Membership Inches Up Again
Membership in the American Booksellers Association rose again in the most recent year, up by 48 members to 1,712 in all. The organization’s ranks have now grown for six consecutive years, after reaching a low of 1,410 members in 2008. In 2014 the ABA rolls rose by 32 members; in 2012 the ABA rolls rose by 65 members; in 2011 the gain was 55 members; in 2010, as they prepared to merge with the Association of Booksellers for Children they grew by 102 members; and in 2009, they grew by 9 members. The ABA also benefited from the recent trend […]
The Look Ahead to BEA
With BEA set to begin on Wednesday, May 27 just after the extended Memorial Day Weekend, here’s an end-of-week reminder of the links you’ll need to get through the entire show: – during the day, stay on top of events with our simple, essential all-in-one sheet “master schedule”, posted at publun.ch/BEA15sched – at night, keep your social engagements straight (but only by invitation) with our BEA Party Planner – sample many of the biggest discovery books of the show ahead with free copies of our ebooks Buzz Books 2015: Fall/Winter and Buzz Books 2015: Young Adult – and catch up on […]
Fall/Winter Buzz Books Preview: Fiction
As usual, our free Buzz Books sampler opens with Sarah Weinman’s broader surveys of over 100 notable books from the forthcoming season. Following the nonfiction overview from earlier this week, here is our literary fiction summer, to help round out your BEA radar — and you can read the complete excerpts anytime in the new editions of Buzz Books. And also as usual, publication dates may have changed, and errors are ours (as well as the ONIX feed.) Here is our look at forthcoming fiction: Literary Fiction Publishers typically reserve their biggest literary titles for the fall, and this season is […]