ABA Programming Adds to Energy at MPBA Spring Meeting

The Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association (MPBA) held its Spring Meeting at the Marriott Denver Tech Center in Colorado from Thursday, March 31, to Saturday, April 2. On Friday, an ABA Booksellers Forum and Education Program was held in conjunction with the meeting. The high-energy weekend also included sales reps' Pick o' the List presentations, exhibits, rep/bookseller meetings, author events, and the Regional Book Awards Banquet.

MPBA welcomed four new member bookstores and two new owners of existing stores, so ABA's programming ran the gamut from the very technical for longtime booksellers, to the basics for neophytes.

Topics discussed at the Booksellers Forum, led by ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz, COO Oren Teicher, Director of BookSense.com Len Vlahos, and ABA Board member Cathy Langer of Denver's Tattered Cover Book Store, included the latest improvements to BookWeb's Idea Exchange forums, Internet sales taxes, Harry Potter gift cards, the future of the USA Patriot Act, and health insurance issues for booksellers.

Catherine Weller of Sam Weller's in Salt Lake City, who has strong opinions about health insurance legislation, told BTW, "I am always bringing up the need to lobby for interstate, association-based health insurance -- that way ABA could offer much lower rates for us to buy insurance. It's one of our largest expenses, and we'd all greatly benefit if costs could be controlled. Employees at our store pay half the cost [of health insurance], but the newer employees can't afford that, so they go without. That's not a good situation for anybody.

"I always enjoy the discussions at these meetings," continued Weller. "We also talked briefly about gift cards and some things planned for BEA [BookExpo America]. ABA staff explained why participating in ABACUS is so important -- much of the educational programming [that ABA is developing] is based on the ABACUS results.

"We heard a bit about Constant Contact, an e-mail marketing service that can help stores with newsletters. And I was very glad that ABA staff brought up Section 215 of the Patriot Act and advised us to keep putting petitions in our stores. We want people to know that we're still fighting this." (For more about the Campaign for Reader Privacy, go to www.bookweb.org/read/7679.)

After the forum, former ABA president Chuck Robinson of Village Books in Bellingham, Washington, presented ABA's popular "The 2% Solution." The content, including all aspects of a bookstore's profitability, was an eye-opener for new booksellers Cindy Collins and Angie Keyes, whose 3,300-square-foot store, Reading Grounds, will open this June in Omaha, Nebraska.

Collins told BTW that hearing from experienced booksellers added a valuable reality check to her projections. "The sessions were extremely enlightening -- we knew all the components of running a store, but all kinds of things can go on between the lines," she said. "'The 2% Solution' was really worthwhile for us. Even though we had carefully worked out a budget in our business plan, we saw how even the smallest adjustments would make a huge difference in the bottom line. The cost of everything is just a tiny bit more than we had planned for and even a small amount could ruin our plans."

Friday afternoon, Langer of Tattered Cover presented ABA's "Increasing Margin: An Advanced Course in Growing Your Bottom Line." Intended for more experienced booksellers, the session offered contrasts between profitable and unprofitable bookstores, and the finer points of using publisher's co-op monies were discussed.

Sue McBride, owner of Whistle Stop Books in Douglas, Wyoming, for the past two years, told BTW that the sessions gave her opportunities to "use my finite dollars more effectively." She was pleased to learn ways to increase margins. "The sessions are always informative," she said. "And it's so good to network with other independents -- the whole experience is renewing. I always come back with lots of new ideas."

Collins felt that her long day of traveling, caused by flight delays from Omaha, was well worth it. "It was really a lot of fun. So much of what was presented will be useful in the future -- we took home print outlines of all the workshops and other information was passed out. We can refer back to those when we need to. Also we have the phone numbers of really knowledgeable booksellers we can call when we have questions."

Collins also was convinced, over the course of the day, of the value of the Book Sense program. "We weren't going to join," she explained. "It just didn't seem that useful to us -- then we heard all about the program from the other booksellers, and we are definitely signing up." --Nomi Schwartz