Dear Booksellers,
The final days of the holiday retail season have always been my favorite — the moment when there’s not much more you can do except ride the wave to shore.
We know it’s been quite the ride this year. Harassment of stores, flooding, snowstorms, and serious shipping delays made this season especially challenging. Behind the scenes, we’ve been working with publishers and wholesalers, assisting with insurance claims, and offering support and resources wherever we could.
Despite it all, we hope your season was also filled with moments of holiday retail magic: finding the last copy of a book that’s been missing for days for a grateful customer, deciphering a few vague clues to identify the title a customer has been frantically trying to remember, recommending the perfect book for a customer’s impossible-to-shop-for family member, and hearing again and again how much your store means to your community.
We hope those moments sustained you through this particularly challenging season, and that a new swell is already beginning to take shape for 2026.
Thank you for all the ways you made the world better this year, and best wishes for the year ahead.
—Allison K Hill, ABA CEO