The American Booksellers Association offers two opportunities for live online education [8]: a twice-monthly Marketing Meetup and a monthly Technology Meetup. All member booksellers are invited to participate in these online discussions; subscribe to the mailing list here [8] to receive invitations for the Technology Meetups, Marketing Meetups, or both.

On Tuesday, October 8, at 2:00 p.m. EDT, ABA will host a Technology Meetup on alternative payment methods. Whether in-store or at an offsite event, collecting payment is a key part of booksellers’ day-to-day business, but with so many payment options to choose from — such as Square, PayPal, Chase Pay, and more — it can be difficult to figure out which one is best.

Guest speakers will be Dave Lucey of Page 158 Books [9], Jocelyn Shratter of Bookshop Santa Cruz [10], and Cindi Whittemore of Ink Spell Books [11].

On Thursday, October 17, at 11:00 a.m. EDT, ABA will host its next Marketing Meetup, which will look at marketing Libro.fm audiobooks. ABA affinity partner Libro.fm enables independent stores to sell digital audiobooks through a co-branded experience. Watch next week’s issue of BTW for more details.

Booksellers must register to attend the Marketing or Technology Meetups; to attend both types of meetups, booksellers will need to register for each. Booksellers who sign up through Zoom will be added to ABA’s Marketing and/or Technology Meetup mailing list. Learn more about ABA meetups here [8].