Registration is now open for ABA's Sixth Annual Winter Institute, to be held from Wednesday, January 19, through Friday, January 21, 2011, at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. This educational event – sponsored by Ingram – is a member benefit exclusively for ABA bookstore and provisional members.

For the second year, ABA will award the Avin Mark Domnitz Scholarship to the Winter Institute in honor of its former CEO's wide-ranging contributions to independent bookselling. The scholarship to the Sixth Annual Winter Institute is open to the owners and regular employees of bookstores that submit their 2009 financial data to the ABACUS Survey.

At last month's Winter Institute, there was the planned, organized education, and then there was unplanned, spontaneous education. At the "Customer Surveys" session led by ABA COO Len Vlahos, "someone brought up Paco Underhill's book Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping(S&S)] and asked if anyone had hired a consultant to review their store," Christie Olson Day told BTW.

Daniel Clancy, director of Google Books, offered a keynote presentation at the Winter Institute's Technology Day that provided booksellers with insights into plans for Google Editions, launching later this year, as well as a deeper understanding of the challenges of the e-book marketplace.

For 90 minutes on Thursday morning at the Winter Institute, booksellers zeroed in on the provocative aspects of consumer demographics and book-buying preferences offered by Jack McKeown, industry consultant and director of New Business Development for Verso Digital, as he reviewed the results of Verso's recent "Survey of Book Buying Behavior."

Three savvy indie booksellers shared their ideas for using online tools to promote book sales with a packed house at the Fifth Annual Winter Institute education session "Handselling 201: Using the Digital Age to Your Advantage." Panelists Andrew Getman of Politics & Prose, Kelly Justice of Fountain Bookstore, and Pete Mulvihill of Green Apple Books presented real-life examples of how they have boosted sales via their store websites, in-house videos, Twitter campaigns, e-newsletters, and more.