News - Regional

The winners of the 2003 Great Lakes Book Awards were recently announced by the Great Lakes Booksellers Association (GLBA).

The winners are: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar Straus & Giroux and Picador USA) for Fiction; To Conquer the Air by James Tobin (The Free Press) in the General category; and Girl Wonder by Deborah Hopkinson, illustrated by Rich Widener (Atheneum) for Children’s Literature.

This year's Upper Midwest Booksellers Association (UMBA) Trade Show will be held from Friday, October 10 to Sunday, October 12, at the RiverCentre in St. Paul, Minneapolis. Exhibit hours are 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday and 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Sunday. Education programming, all free this year, will be held on Friday.

This year's Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA) Trade Show will be held from October 3 - 5 at the Oakland Convention Center/Oakland City Center Marriott, Oakland, California. Always in the forefront of positive changes in the bookselling universe, NCIBA has lined up top authors at all events and is focusing attention on the recent report regarding locally owned independents and the economic health of communities.

This fall, a documentary on the well-publicized court case in which Denver's Tattered Cover Book Store fought to protect its customers' right to privacy will be shown on regional PBS stations and will be part of a free expression panel that will be held at three of the fall regional trade shows. The Just Media Fund, an organization that helps develop media that focuses on social justice issues, produced the 27-minute film, Reading Your Rights.

In just over a week's time, this fall's regional trade show schedule will kick off with the 2003 Mid-South Independent Booksellers Association (MSIBA) Trade Show, held September 4 - 7 at the Renaissance Austin Hotel in Austin, Texas.

The Great Lakes Booksellers Association (GLBA) Trade Show will be held October 3 - 5 at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn, Michigan. The show will feature a broad range of educational programming, author events, and games of skill and chance.

The Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association (MPBA) Trade Show will be held from Thursday, October 2, to Sunday, October 5, at the Marriott Denver Tech Center in Denver. This year's event will offer attendees great bookselling seminars and a stellar lineup of authors.

Each new season brings changes in hemlines, baby names, and books being published … and shoplifted. Many New England booksellers are finding that blockbuster bestsellers are very high on the lists of books most stolen from independent stores. The problem of shoplifting is a constant one for retailers, but some New England Booksellers Association (NEBA) members have recently noticed changes in the quantity and types of books stolen from their stores.

The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) Fall Trade Show will be held on Sunday and Monday, September 21 - 22, in the Events Center at the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The two-day event offers booksellers a wealth of educational programming on Sunday, and, on Monday, over 500 publishers at 275 display tables will be represented on the trade show floor, and 100 authors will be on hand to autograph books.

The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) trade show promises to bring together some stellar authors, constructive educational sessions, celebrations, and a host of new titles.

The latest in a series of New England Booksellers Association (NEBA)-sponsored "Shoptalks" will be held in Hanover, New Hampshire, on Thursday, August 14, followed by a complimentary lunch. The event will take place at the Hanover Inn at Dartmouth College and is free and open to all NEBA members.

The 2003 Mid-South Independent Booksellers Association (MSIBA) Fall Trade Show will be held September 4 - 7 at the Renaissance Austin Hotel in Austin, Texas.

Attending the trade show from ABA will be CEO Avin Mark Domnitz and Len Vlahos, director, BookSense.com.

The ABA-sponsored programs at MSIBA are:

"I tried not to go to too many hills," said Julie Todd of A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books in San Francisco. On Saturday, July 12, which was a sunny, beautiful day in the Bay Area, Todd led an all-day literary bicycle tour of independent bookstores in San Francisco. The 16 cyclists met in the morning at A Clean Well-Lighted Place and cycled to 10 independents over the course of the day, pausing at each store to browse and buy books. At every stop, a bookseller would discuss a current favorite book and/or giving a brief history of their store.

In a new grassroots effort to support independent booksellers, Larry Portzline, a part-time teacher, has developed the concept of "Bookstore Tourism," a term he coined (and trademarked). The goal of Bookstore Tourism, according to Portzline's Web site (www.bookstoretourism.com), is "to encourage book-lovers across the United States to organize day-trips to cities and towns with interesting, fun, and unique bookstores that folks in their own communities may not be able to visit regularly."