On Demand Education Sessions

ABA's Lightning Talk series features booksellers presenting 5-10 minute talks on tech tools, organizational strategies, communication methods, or innovations they’ve made in their stores. On February 22, 2024, Ryan Clark of Gibson’s Bookstore (Concord, NH) discussed Bookstore BINGO and #BookHaul Photo Booths.

ABA's Lightning Talk series features booksellers presenting 5-10 minute talks on tech tools, organizational strategies, communication methods, or innovations they’ve made in their stores. On February 22, 2024, Eileen McCormick of Green Apple Books (San Francisco, CA) discussed Partnering with Community Organizations for Independent Bookstore Day.

It is vital for a business to have visual content that is brand-focused, eye-catching, and easy to read. Luckily, with an array of low-cost and accessible web tools now available, it has never been easier. This panel features graphic design experts from a variety of backgrounds who will show examples of their work and discuss the graphic design tools they use to enhance their store’s promotional content, branding, signage, social media, events, and more. No matter your level of skill or comfort with graphic design, you will be able to apply something you learn here to your business. (All)

During this session booksellers will hear from Taylor Soignoli of Bonfire, on their online platform where anyone can design and sell custom products, the services they offer around helping create unique designs and some best practices and examples of well-run campaigns.

A full transcription and closed captioning are available for this session. Please note that both are machine-generated and are not reviewed for accuracy.

Get a jump start on your holiday marketing plans by joining us for this open conversation on what's worked in the past, ideas you want to try this year, and how you'll be preparing.

A full transcription and closed captioning are available for this session. Please note that both are machine-generated and are not reviewed for accuracy.

In this robust conversation with bookstores and audio publishers, attendees will get updates about audiobook sales and consumer behavior and tips for interesting customers in the format. Learn from bookstores about how audiobook sales have benefited their stores and what suggestions they have for making the most of offering the format. 

A full transcription and closed captioning are available for this session. Please note that both are machine-generated and are not reviewed for accuracy.

Book fairs come in all shapes and sizes. If well planned, they can be a profitable undertaking for a bookstore. In this session, booksellers with profitable book fair models will discuss different store models and how bookstores with established relationships with local school districts can analyze and optimize profitability.

BookTok is here to stay. In this session, booksellers will learn how bookstores, authors, and publishers use BookTok to assess sales, trends, and engage with a virtual community of readers.

In this session, bookstores with experience with the media will share how to to make your store media ready, including creating an About Us section that will attract press, how to build a media kit, which components are key, and how to select the assets to share to highlight your bookstore’s individuality in the press.

Brenna Connor, Books Insights Manager of The NPD Group, will break down the state of the US children’s book market including key trends to watch, highest growth areas, and performance by genre, format, and age range. This can’t-miss session is based on the latest NPD BookScan data and Brenna’s industry expertise.

Storytime is so much more than a staff member reading a book to little ones. It is an opportunity to brand your store, bolster sales, generate goodwill, and capture new audiences. This session will unpack how to turn storytime into a bookselling event with introductory storytelling training, as well as ideas to drive sales and create a new revenue stream by monetizing the event.

From book banning challenges and troll attacks to stores faced with defending their store mission, business decisions, or mistakes, the past two years we’ve seen stores impacted by social media and PR crises. Effective crisis communication management starts long before an issue arises. In this session, learn how to create a plan to mitigate and respond to risk, and how to handle things when the plan fails.

Learn the ins and outs of TikTok in a workshop environment. Participants will gain a better understanding of TikTok lingo, how to record and produce video, as well as basic to intermediate editing tools that will help bookstores attract customers a drive sales.

Online advertising becomes a larger part of small businesses every day and there are a lot of options. In this session you'll learn about the differences between Google ads and Facebook/Instagram ads, hear from fellow booksellers about their uses of both and the benefits they find behind them.

A full transcription and closed captioning are available for this session. Please note that both are machine-generated and are not reviewed for accuracy.

Email newsletters are one of the most used marketing tools for small businesses. This session, led by Gwyn Ridenhour at Matchbook Marketing, will review the free Indie Next List e-newsletter program available to ABA members, provide general email newsletter best practices, and discuss Matchbook Marketing’s other newsletter services.

A full transcription and closed captioning are available for this session. Please note that both are machine-generated and are not reviewed for accuracy.

During this session you will hear from several booksellers on how they market offsite events and how they work as a tool to bring customers back to their stores.

A full transcription and closed captioning are available for this session. Please note that both are machine-generated and are not reviewed for accuracy.

A customer experience/marketing funnel is a visualization that outlines the process of turning customers into advocates, which in turn refuels the top of any marketing funnel by driving awareness and lead generation. This funnel is a useful tool to help you visualize the path people take from when they first find out about your business to when they convert into customers. A good customer experience/marketing funnel outlines the process of turning customers into advocates, which in turn refuels the top of the marketing funnel by driving awareness and lead generation.

A full transcription and closed captioning are available for this session. Please note that both are machine-generated and are not reviewed for accuracy.

This session does not have any specific guest speakers. Instead, booksellers partake in an open conversation about what marketing ideas worked and didn't work last year, marketing plans for the upcoming year, marketing meetup topics that stores benefited from last year, and what booksellers might like to see covered during the 2022 line up.

A full transcription and closed captioning are available for this session. Please note that both are machine-generated and are not reviewed for accuracy.

During this session booksellers will hear from Jorge Portillo, Senior Commercial Manager at Eventbrite on their new Boost service; the only marketing platform built specifically for events. Eventbrite Boost allows you to market to more people and manage your events all in one place.

>A full transcription and closed captioning are available for this session. Please note that both are machine-generated and are not reviewed for accuracy.

Booksellers will hear from several guest speakers on a range of topics related to marketing both mixed and used book inventory including marketing ideas that have worked for them, how their trade-in programs work, and placement within the store.

A full transcription and closed captioning are available for this session. Please note that both are machine-generated and are not reviewed for accuracy.

This session will focus on Holiday Marketing and include bookseller guest speakers who will be sharing their best practices and tips, from what's worked for them in the past to what they are thinking for this year. Guest speakers for this session are

• Alsace Walentine, Tombolo Books
• Jamilah Horton, House of Pages Bookstore
• Kate Schlademan, The Learned Owl Bookshop
• LToya Wilson, Eclectuals Bookstore
• Stacy Hardin, Book Rack Used Books

A full transcription and closed captioning are available for this session. Please note that both are machine-generated and are not reviewed for accuracy.

This session is part four of our Social Media series and focuses on social media analytics. It will include discussion on common benchmarks and available analytics tools used by other booksellers. Guest speakers for this session are:

• Kelsey Hammond, Yellow Dog Bookshop
• Rhiannon Gupta, RJ Julia Booksellers & Wesleyan RJ Julia Booksellers
• Kathy Ellen Davis, Bards Alley and NAIBA

Part 5 of our Social Media Series! This session will be an open Q&A format during which attendees can ask a few of the bookseller panelists from the prior sessions in the series additional questions related to social media.

This session is part four of our Social Media series and focuses on social media analytics. It will include discussion on common benchmarks and available analytics tools used by other booksellers. Guest speakers for this session are:

• Christine Bollow, Loyalty Bookstores
• Robin Wood, Books & Books @ The Studios
• Kathy Ellen Davis, Bards Alley and NAIBA 

This session is the second of our five part Social Media series: All About Video and will feature guest speakers:

• Abbigail Glen, Shelves Bookstore
• Kathy Ellen Davis, Bards Alley and NAIBA 
• Kassie King and Stephanie Skees, The Novel Neighbor

This session is the first of our five part Social Media series: Need to Knows and Best Practices and will feature guest speakers:

• Isis Asare, Sistah Scifi
• Christina Ciampa, All She Wrote Books
• Claire Phelan, Third Place Books 

Patreon is a membership platform that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service. In this session, Mary Ellen Funke of Patreon will present what Patreon is, why it is a valuable tool, use cases, and review Patreon pricing with time being included for a Q/A portion as well.

From romance to mystery, thriller to horror, fantasy to science fiction, and so much more, the world of genre fiction is filled with loyal readers. Are you reaching them? Booksellers will hear from several guest speakers on a bevy of topics related to marketing to the genre audience. Guest speakers will include:

• Danielle King, Left Bank Books in St. Louis, MO
• Stephanie Csaszar, Books Around the Corner in Gresham, OR
• Deanna Bailey, Story on the Square in McDonough, GA
• Kristian Beverly, Cupboard Maker Books in Enola, PA

Email list management is a necessary part of using any email marketing tool. The critical tasks of email list management include ensuring the contacts’ email addresses are valid, responding to unsubscribe requests efficiently, and maintaining your list of engaged subscribers with the end goals being a low bounce rate, a high open rate, and an overall healthy mailing list. This session, led by Cynthia Munoz, Constant Contact Retention Specialist will share best practices applicable to any platform and offer a demo of how to implement those best practices within Constant Contact. 

• Katrina Brooks, Black Pearl Books in Austin, TX
• Marianne Reiner, Run for Cover Bookstore in San Diego, CA
• Melanie Moore, Cincy Book Bus in Cincinnati, OH
• Lady Smith, The Snail on the Wall in Huntsville, AL
• Tameca Blossom-Lyons, Brown Babies Books in Evanston, IL
• Victoria Scott-Miller, Liberation Station in Durham, NC
• Lucy Kull, Redux Society in Kansas City, MO

This Marketing Meetup focuses on Independent Bookstore Day (IBD) and will include an overview of the annual event, why it’s important, and how some bookstores are celebrating and promoting it this year.

Guest speakers for this session are:

• Samantha Schoech, IBD Program Director 
• Danielle Mullen, Semicolon Bookstore, Chicago, Illinois
• Erin Ball, Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, Washington
• Britt Hopkins, Second Star to the Right Children’s Books, Denver, Colorado
• Robin Wood, Books & Books at The Studios of Key West, Key West, Florida
• Hannah Reidell, Raven Book Store, Lawrence, Kansas, and MIBA
• Courtney Karecki, ABA IndieCommerce Specialist

• Serena Longo, Harvard Bookstore (Cambridge, MA)
• Teresa Lynch, The Ripped Bodice (Culver City, CA)
• Lety Stanton-Verduzco, Brain Lair Books (South Bend, IN)
• Misian Taylor, Room of One’s Own (Madison, WI)

The session is on Marketing Poetry Books and will focus on marketing poetry books and feature booksellers who have experience with the poetry genre, including hand-selling to new and experienced poetry readers and launching poetry-based events and programs in their stores. The session will feature guest speakers; Yanna Demkiewicz of Milkweed Editions  in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Danny Caine of Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas, Angela Maria Spring of Duende District Bookstore, Washington, D.C., and Albuquerque, New Mexico, Anna Claire Weber of White Whale Books in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Nia McAllister of the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) Bookstore in San Francisco, California.

This session will include a live demonstration from Shaina Mahler and Justin Gold of Above the Treeline. There will be case studies and best practices from booksellers as well as plenty of time for questions. The session will feature these bookseller panelists: Jenny Cohen of Waucoma Bookstore in Hood River, Oregon Jamie Rogers Southern of Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina Tom Batterson of New Story Community Books in Marshall, Michigan Lauren Messamore of Watermark Books & Café in Wichita, Kansas

This Marketing Meetup will not have any specific guest speakers. Instead, booksellers are invited to partake in an open conversation about the results of the feedback survey, the marketing initiatives they are starting the year with, and what they might be thinking of for 2021 in general.

This session will not have any specific guest speakers. Instead, booksellers are invited to partake in an open conversation about what marketing ideas worked and didn't work this year, marketing plans for the upcoming year, marketing meetup topics that stores benefited from over the past year, and what booksellers might like to see covered during meetups in 2021.

In this session, ABA CEO Allison Hill and COO Joy Dallanegra-Sanger discuss ABA's Fall Marketing Campaigns including the “October Is the New December” materials as well as the #BoxedOut campaign coordinated with DCX advertising.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “data is king” many times, and it isn’t going anywhere. Knowing how to collect and use your customer and sales data is key to successful marketing and better customer engagement. Jordan Brannon and Cassandra Cross of Coalition Technologies, a Los Angeles-based digital marketing agency, will introduce some key elements of maximizing the value of the data your business captures, and ABA’s Ryan Quinn will present the top 10 tips and notes from indie bookstores.

Bookseller guest speakers share their best suggestions and ideas on Holiday Marketing for the coming season. 

Romance novels offer a happy ending usually accompanied by warm fuzzy feelings, and, to a point, predictability. During these uncertain times, is it any surprise that more readers are seeking the comfort romance books provide? In this session, booksellers will hear from several guest speakers on a bevy of topics such as marketing romance books, who the romance reader is, who might be a romance reader, what a store is missing out on by not selling romance books, what type of events can be created, and more.