Gearing Up for the MPBA Fall Show

The Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association (MPBA) Fall Trade Show will be held from Thursday, September 16, through Sunday, September 19, at the Marriott Denver Tech Center in Denver. This year's show will once again feature educational panels and the Saturday Night Author Reception. And, in response to the popularity of last year's reception, a Friday Night Author Reception has been added.

"It's my 19th year as [MPBA] executive director," said Lisa Knudsen, "and I still get excited about the trade show. Thursday and Friday, our education days, are stuffed with great seminars and roundtables to help our booksellers maintain their competitive edge. Building on the success of our Spring Meeting in Denver last March, we're continuing to put emphasis on the importance of the relationship between booksellers and publishers' reps and are planning a reprise of our successful 'Care and Feeding of the Rep/Bookseller Partnership' panel.

"We have a number of new exhibitors this year, many of them smaller publishers with titles of regional interest. There will be tons of authors autographing their new fall titles - we have added a new event, the Friday evening Author Reception, to accommodate them. The Saturday and Sunday morning Author Breakfasts are always much anticipated and are great fundraisers for our literacy programs."

ABA will provide educational programming, as well as an exhibit on the trade show floor. This year's exhibit will focus on "Book Sense Gift Cards: One Year Later," featuring live demonstrations. Association staff will also be on hand to gather member input on ABA education initiatives, as well as to provide general information.

The Book Sense Gift Card Program, just completing its first year of operation, has already helped more than 200 bookstores dramatically increase their sales. The ABA exhibit will give booksellers the opportunity to see firsthand how the gift card program works. As an incentive to try the gift card, ABA will waive the one-time $25 set-up fee for booksellers signing up at the show. (If you plan to sign up at the show, please bring your checking account info with you. For more details on the program, click here.)

The number-one goal of ABA's strategic plan is to "provide independent professional booksellers with access to the education, information, and business services they need to succeed in a changing world, and ABA staff attending MPBA will be seeking bookseller input on how best to construct the association's educational offerings moving forward. An "ABA Education 2005 Survey" was recently sent to members via e-mail and can be downloaded in PDF format by clicking here. Survey forms will also be available at ABA's booth on the trade show floor. (Booksellers returning surveys at the trade show will be entered into a sweepstakes to win a color, inkjet computer printer.)

ABA-sponsored programs, all Friday, September 17, at MPBA are:

Friday, September 17

• 10:00 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. "Identify Competition & Self-Evaluation: A Method to Conduct the Analysis." Everybody is selling books, or so it seems. This session will help you identify possible competitors in your trade area and will suggest a method for determining if they are impacting your business. After identifying your competition, you need a method of analyzing your business to see how you (with objectivity) measure up. Why does any consumer buy their books at any place and at any time? What are the factors that enter into this basic decision that is at the core of all consumer conduct? How does your store measure up? The moderator is ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz.
  

• 1:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. ABA Marketing Director Jill Perlstein will conduct a "Book Sense Gift Card Users Group." The users group will review the gift card program and will hold a discussion about future growth. Booksellers will be asked to share their experiences regarding the operation of the program, as well as some of their marketing ideas. One-on-one meetings to discuss the Book Sense Gift Card Program may also be scheduled for any time during the MPBA show. To schedule a meeting in advance of the show, booksellers should send an e-mail to Perlstein at [email protected].
  

• 1:45 p.m. - 3:45 p.m. Domnitz will also present "The 2% Solution." The 2003 ABACUS Study of independent bookshop operations showed that the average profitability of all 197 participants was -1.67 percent. This seminar looks at the drivers of profitability and examines how they can be worked on to move your businesses to profitability. The session suggests exactly how a bookseller can work on sales, gross margin, compensation, and occupancy expense. While moving from negative profitability to a positive two percent is a long journey, this seminar will help provide the roadmap
  

MPBA education sessions will be held on Thursday, from 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., and Friday, from 9:30 a.m. - 3:45 a.m., and include "One Marketing Idea That Worked in My Store This Year," concurrent roundtable discussions of no more than 10 -15 booksellers, which will be moderated by an MPBA Board member; a "Primer on School & Library Sales," moderated by Carolyn Harrington of Great Horned Owl Bookstore in Denver; and "DVDs and Music: Adding Profitable and Upmarket Categories to Your Bookstore," presented by Baker & Taylor.

The Friday Night and Saturday Night Author Receptions, featuring food, a cash bar, and 20-plus authors autographing their new fall titles each night, will be held from 5:00 p.m. -7:00 p.m. At the Saturday night reception, the Gordon Saull Bookseller of the Year and Sales Rep of the Year Awards will be presented.

Another show highlight is the Author Breakfast for Literacy on Saturday, September 18, from 7:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. Scheduled to attend are Francisco Goldman (The Divine Husband, Grove Atlantic); Esmeralda Santiago (The Turkish Lover, Da Capo); Jeff Shaara (To the Last Man, Ballantine); and ABC News' award winning Senior Correspondent Jim Wooten, whose latest book, We Are All The Same, will be released by Penguin in November. The Children's Author and Illustrator Breakfast will be on Sunday, September 19, from 7:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m., and will feature Mark Teague (Dear Mrs. LaRue, Scholastic) and D.B. Johnson (Henry series, Houghton Mifflin).

For more information on the MPBA Fall Trade Show, go to www.mountainsplains.org/, or e-mail, [email protected]. --Karen Schechner