Education Resources

 

The world of work has changed. New worker expectations, growing labor movements, pandemic trauma, increased need for de-escalation skills, and pandemic-induced skill gaps are creating new challenges and opportunities for managers and frontline employees. In this session, hear from an expert on current labor trends to consider when hiring, developing, and supporting staff.

 

Speakers

Nicolas Williams, University of Cincinnati - Cincinnati, OH

 

Files & Links

Slide Deck

Description

The changing landscape of bookselling brings new challenges every day, and it is essential to learn how to respond without losing sight of your goals or purpose. Join Bonnie Wan, author of The Life Brief, for a workshop that creates space to declare your ambitions/focus for 2024 and design a brief for how you will achieve growth, engagement, and concentrate on what matters most deeply to you and your business.

 

Speakers

Bonnie Wan, author of The Life Brief: A Playbook for No-Regrets Living (available now from Simon Element)

 

Files & Links

Slide Deck

Description

The heart of a bookstore is the bookseller in the stacks, on the floor, behind the counter, or in the back room. These are the dedicated professionals who create the welcoming environment your community experiences every day. How do you keep this team? This session will cover important factors that impact employee retention today. You will be asked to consider your store culture, the openness of store-wide communication, your diversity and inclusion efforts, and conditions around compensation, among other important factors that drive employee satisfaction and retention. Come prepared to listen, engage, and leave with the beginnings of an action plan.

 

Speakers

Suzanna Hermans, Oblong Books - Millerton, NY

Jamie Thomas, Women & Children First - Chicago, IL

DJ Johnson, Baldwin & Co. - New Orleans, LA

Lyn Roberts, Square Books - Oxford, MS

 

Files & Links

Slide Deck

 

Although you may be creating events that look successful, your return on investment might not be. Come to this session to learn what information you should be tracking, how to track it, and how to analyze this data so you can evaluate whether or not an event is worth your staff’s time.

 

Speakers

Cindy Dach, Changing Hands Bookstore - Tempe, AZ

 

Files & Links

Slide Deck

 

Keeping a bookstore running can feel like having too many tabs open in your brain at once. Luckily, there are project management tools and strategies that can help with that. In this presentation, booksellers who have cracked the code on project management will share the tools and strategies that have helped them set goals and timelines and stay organized with their short- and long-term projects. You’ll leave this session with a better understanding of effective project management, which tool or approach is right for you, and what your next steps are for getting started!

 

Speakers

Kirsten Hess, The End & Let's Play Books Bookstore(s) - Emmaus, PA

Angela Schwesnedl, Moon Palace Books - Minneapolis, MN

Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop - Athens, GA

Cori Theroux, The Green Dragon Bookstore - Fort Dodge, IA

 

Files & Links

Slide Deck

Project Management Reading List

 

This session presents practical ways to prepare to fight book bans before they come to your area. Staff from the American Booksellers for Free Expression (ABFE), ABA’s free expression initiative, will advise attendees on what they can do locally: how to engage with their community and local government, and what actions to take if attempted book bans do arrive. Presented by the ABA Children’s Group.

 

Speakers

Cathy Berner, Blue Willow Bookshop - Houston, TX

Leah Johnson, Loudmouth Books - Indianapolis, IN

Philomena Polefrone, American Booksellers Association - White Plains, NY

Angela Cooper, ACLU of Kentucky - Louisville, KY

 

Files & Links

Slide Deck

ABA's Right to Read Toolkit

KYGA Book Bans Digital Toolkit

 

Every bookseller in the UK uses Batch to simplify their Accounts Payable and publisher invoice management and over 300 US booksellers (and growing!) are now using it. Come learn more about this free platform to:

The more booksellers that sign up for Batch, the more publishers that will sign up! Saving everyone time and money.

 

Speakers

Kathy Burnette, Brain Lair Books - South Bend, IN

Kate Layte, Papercuts Bookshop - Boston, MA

Zachary Matelski, McLean and Eakin Booksellers - Petoskey, MI

Nathan Halter, Batch for Books - Hartford, CT

 

Files & Links

Slide Deck

 

Description

Investing in the leadership skills of your staff has both short-term and long-term benefits, from building a better culture for your team to identifying potential successors when you retire. In this session, Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor and the forthcoming Radical Respect, will teach you how to nurture staff into leadership roles, and evaluate the process for success!

 

Speakers

Kim Scott, author of Radical Respect : How to Work Together Better (On sale May 7, 2024 from St. Martin's Griffin)

 

Files & Links

Slide Deck

Description

You’ve meticulously curated your inventory, designed the perfect displays, and developed an events program for your community — but how will you know if what you’re doing is working? Tracking Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will give you the answer. KPIs are specific outcome-based targets that support your strategic plan and can be measured quantitatively, such as inventory turnover ratios, sales per square foot, and average transaction value. By the time you leave this session, you will: (1) understand the meaning and value of critical retail KPIs and how to track them, (2) understand how to compare your store’s KPIs against financial metrics found in the ABACUS report, and (3) be able to apply this data to create an improvement plan for at least one area of your store’s performance.

 

Speakers

Cynthia Compton, MacArthur Books - Carmel, IN

Melissa DeMotte, The Well Read Moose - Coeur d'Alene, ID

Candice Anderson, Tombolo Books - St. Petersburg, FL

 

Files & Links

Slide Deck

 

Description

Contemporary fiction increasingly invites the reader to see race, gender, and sexuality not as binary identities, but as a vibrant spectrum of diversity. This year's new fiction is opening up space for new ideas about how we might expand our understanding of identity and what myriad of relational dynamics are possible beyond the normative concepts of race, gender, and sexuality. In this keynote panel, four authors share their thoughts and experiences writing for a world that has moved beyond the traditional binary definitions of identity and belonging.

 

Speakers

Miranda July, author of All Fours (On sale May 14, 2024 from Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House)

Danzy Senna, author of Colored Television (On sale September 3, 2024 from Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House)

LaDarrion Williams, author of Blood at the Root (On sale May 7, 2024 from Labyrinth Road/Penguin Random House)

Maysoon Zayid, author of Shiny Misfits: A Graphic Novel (On sale April 16, 2024 from Graphix/Scholastic)

Anton Bogomazov, Politics and Prose Bookstore - Washington, DC

 

Files & Links

Live Captioning