As part of the ABA Board’s commitment to transparency and increased communication, watch your inbox this Friday for a special Board Edition of BTW. This edition will include a recap of the May board meeting and a letter from Board President Christine Onorati and Co-Vice Presidents Kelly Estep and Angela María Spring.

Are you signed up for IBD Newsletters? As we continue to work through supply chain issues, we are proposing an earlier planning timeline for IBD 2023. The new timeline for all IBD sign-ups is as follows: 

• October 21, 2022: IBD 2023 Order and Participation Form opens
• November 11, 2022: IBD 2023 Order and Participation Form closes
• Late March/Early April 2023: IBD 2023 exclusives arrive at stores
• April 29, 2023: Independent Bookstore Day

We suggest marking your calendars now and signing up for IBD Newsletters through the Member Dashboard to ensure you don't miss out on signing up for Independent Bookstore Day on April 29, 2023.

The American Booksellers Association needs you to take action to defend the right to read. To that end, ABA has created a letter that you can adopt to write, email, or call your state legislator, local officials, and members of the Board of Education, asking them to pledge their support for free expression.

Join the American Booksellers Association (ABA) and the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) for a webinar with guest speakers from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) on Tuesday, July 12 from 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm ET. Come learn about the free resources the SBA has to offer for small business owners! The webinar will also cover topics like access to capital, SBA-backed loans and disaster assistance, plus a Q&A. All small business owners are encouraged to attend. Advance registration is required.

Independent booksellers across the country have chosen Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Knopf) as their top pick for the July 2022 Indie Next List. Here, Bookselling This Week and Zevin talk about how she wrote the book.

Kay Davault is the author of the novel Star Knights, a Summer/Fall 2022 Indies Introduce young adult selection. Here, Davault and Nicole Brinkley of Oblong Books in Rhinebeck, NY, discuss Star Knights.

On Thursday, June 16, the Banned Books Week Coalition announced that George M. Johnson has been named the Honorary Chair for Banned Books Week 2022. The critically acclaimed, and frequently banned, author will lead the weeklong event. This year, Banned Books Week is being held from September 18 to September 24, 2022.

George M. Johnson is an award-winning Black nonbinary activist and author of The New York Times–bestselling young adult memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) and We Are Not Broken (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2021). All Boys Aren’t Blue was the third title on the American Library Association’s Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2021, an annual list released during National Library Week.

Governor Kathy Hochul recently announced the opening of the initial intake tool to help small businesses determine their eligibility for the COVID-19 Capital Costs Tax Credit Program. The $250 million COVID-19 Capital Costs Tax Credit Program will support small businesses that made investments to comply with emergency orders and regulations or to increase public safety in response to COVID-19. Tax credits will cover 50 percent of eligible costs, up to $50,000, for a maximum tax credit award of $25,000, and credits will be awarded on a first come first serve basis until program funds are depleted.