At Last Week’s Regional Shows

Some 225 booksellers, representing 100 stores, met with publishers on the floor at last week's  New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association trade show at the Trump Marina Hotel in Atlantic City.

Among the highlights of the show were the presentation of the NAIBA Legacy Award to Carla Cohen, co-owner with Barbara Meade of Washington, D.C.'s Politics & Prose Bookstore, and tributes to the late Joe Drabyak, a former NAIBA president and longtime bookseller at Chester County Book and Record Company in West Chester, Pennsylvania. NAIBA also presented the first Carla Cohen Free Speech Award to The Dreamer, a book about the poet and activist Pablo Neruda, written by Pam Munoz Ryan and illustrated by Peter Sis.

Member Relationship Manager Kaitlin Pitcher staffed the ABA booth on the NAIBA show floor. Booksellers who stopped by could enter their names for an extra chance to win a scholarship to the Sixth Winter Institute and learn about ABA member services and initiatives.

ABA Content Officer Dan Cullen at the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association trade show with MPIBA Executive Director Lisa Knudsen, who celebrated her upcoming retirement at a party on September 24 on the trade show floor.

The MPIBA Book Awards Breakfast, which featured this year's winners:  author Karla Oceanak and illustrator Kendra Spanjer for Artsy Fartsy;  CJ Box (at the podium), author of Below Zero: A Joe Pickett Novel ; Arthur Sze, author of The Gingko Light; and author Anne Hillerman and photographer Don Strel for Tony Hillerman's Landscape.

Technology was front and center at the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance trade show in Daytona Beach, Florida, last weekend. SIBA set up large monitors around the conference area and showed a live feed of the #SIBA10 hashtag on Twitter.

Show goers were also invited to the “Technology Pavilion,” to meet with SIBA staff and volunteers who were there to discuss and demonstrate emerging technologies.

Many booksellers stopped by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression's table to mark the organization's 20th anniversary with a  slice of cake, provided by SIBA.