Amazon’s Prime Days on July 12 and 13 are great days to remind your customers why it’s important to shop with you! Share ABA’s refreshed Boxed Out and Shop Indie marketing and social media assets with your followers using the hashtags #BoxedOut and #ShopIndie.

Booksellers have until July 26 to submit their responses to ABACUS, ABA’s free annual financial benchmarking survey! Your response impacts our advocacy work, store-landlord negotiations, and ABA’s support for stores. ABACUS can be one of the most useful tools for your business and for our industry. Refer to the email sent June 15 from srizzi@industryinsights.com with the subject line “ABACUS Benchmarking Survey.” Questions? Email ABA Chief Financial Officer, PK Sindwani.

Join over 80 registrants in the American Booksellers Association (ABA) and the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) 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.

On Wednesday, July 13, at 6:00 pm ET, join top romance editors as they chat with their authors about next season’s best titles! The Buzz Books Romance Editors Panel with co-sponsors Publishers Lunch and ABA will feature the following authors:

• Jasmine Guillory, Drunk On Love (Berkley).
• Kennedy Ryan, Before I Let Go (Forever).
• Amber D. Samuel, The Many Dates Of Indigo (W By Wattpad Books).
• Kate Clayborn, Georgie, All Along (Kensington)
• Kylie Scott, End Of Story (Graydon House)

Here are the 25 Indie Next List and 6 Now in Paperback picks on the August 2022 Indie Next List flier. Top pick? The Many Daughters Of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford. And, to mark the start of a new month, July Indie Next List social media assets and the July/August Kids’ Next List social media assets are live on BookWeb.

In response to the rising number of book bans and challenges in recent months, Simon & Schuster is offering an indie-exclusive promotion to assist booksellers on the front lines of book bans across the country. The S&S campaign will provide bookstores with a “Read banned books!” merchandising kit to “offer visually striking banned book displays and dynamic social media content.” The campaign launched at the end of June and will run until the end of August, in advance of Banned Books Week (September 18–24). 

Please note: All physical bookstores are eligible including pop-ups and mobile.

ABA’s free expression initiative, ABFE (American Booksellers for Free Expression) is working around the clock to protect readers’ right to read in the face of book bans across the country. Check out ABFE’s work, including an update of recent work from April 1, 2022 through July 1, 2022. Booksellers can find the quarterly updates under the “Free Expression Work” header on the ABFE page.

Don’t forget to check out these free expression resources for booksellers. Resources include school and library book ban resources, an asset to educate customers about book bans, sample freedom of expression and privacy statements for stores, and tips on preparing for controversial author events. Questions can be sent to ABFE Director David Grogan at abfe@bookweb.org.

Independent booksellers across the country have chosen Melissa Albert’s Our Crooked Hearts (Wednesday Books) as their top pick for the July/August 2022 Kids’ Indie Next List. Here, Bookselling This Week and Albert talk about how she wrote the book.

On Monday, June 27, Alta Journal published their guide to “85 Bookstores We Love” in California and the West. If your neighborhood bookshop was not included, Alta Journal is inviting you to contact them so they can update their list online.

Here is the Indie Travel Literature Bestseller List, based on sales at independent bookstores nationwide for the eight-week period ending July 3, 2022.