Video

If you lost an important resource when Baker and Taylor left the indie community, this is a session you will not want to miss. The panelists will review the benefits of ordering direct from publishers and tips for organizing your resulting paperwork. Also on the panel will be booksellers who have accounts with wholesalers who can discuss those vendors' services for small stores. Panelists: PK Sindwani, ABA (White Plains, NY), Todd Dickinson, Aaron's Books (Lititz, PA), Lane Jacobson, Paulina Springs Books (Sisters, OR), Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books (Point Reyes Station, CA)

This is an opportunity for booksellers to come together to discuss meaningful and often difficult topics. The goal for this conversation is not to find a solution or to provide active take-away steps, but to practice active listening, contributing, and considering other points of view on complex issues facing our industry and society. This session will focus on the politics of curation. What social or economic factors do you consider when you buy, merchandise, hand-sell, and cultivate specific author and publisher relationships? Do you choose to exclude certain titles or authors from your inventory? This conversation will be facilitated by a professional moderator. Panelists: Lexi Beach, Astoria Bookshop (Astoria, NY), Luis Correa, Avid Bookshop (Athens, GA), Kenny Brechner, Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers (Farmington, ME) , Valerie Koehler, Blue Willow Bookshop (Houston, TX), Robert Sindelar, Third Place Books (Lake Forest Park, WA)

New technologies and shifting consumer buying behaviors have reshaped the business landscape. In this Wi15 keynote event, Ryan Raffaelli (@RyanLRaffaelli), associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, will present his groundbreaking research on how longstanding industries can increase their odds of achieving sustained growth in the face of new business threats. Professor Raffaelli will also preview findings from his forthcoming academic paper on the renewed strength of the independent bookstore channel. Drawing on eight years of in-depth field observations of bookstores in 25 states, more than 200 interviews and focus groups, and analysis of extensive archival data, the study examines the decline and subsequent rise of the U.S. independent bookselling sector from 2005 to today. Professor Raffaelli will highlight “3Cs” of reinvention – community, curation, and convening – and offer broader insights for local businesses and communities responding to current significant threats from online and corporate retail competition.

“Co-op” is a word booksellers often hear from publishers, but it can be quite confusing to try to decipher what it is. In this session, bookstores that maximize their spending using co-op dollars will share with attendees:

• What co-op is
• Where co-op comes from
• How a store can save by using their accrued co-op dollars

You have a good idea for an event, but it’s not catching fire. You’ve sent out emails, created fliers for the store, and have even posted on all of your store’s social media channels, so what gives? In this session, marketing and events managers teach attendees:

• Best practices for creating marketing campaigns
• Opportunities for advertisement
• Areas for potential partnerships for cross-marketing
• Marketing timelines
• Using social media methodically to get the most out of your posts
• Thirteenth-hour efforts for the final push

Bookstores that sell direct to schools are an invaluable resource to the local community and have made use of a successful strategy for increasing cash flow and profits. Bookseller panelists who have worked closely with their school districts will share with attendees how they, too, can foster a relationship with school districts and add to their store’s bottom line. In this session, booksellers will learn:

• Creating teacher wish lists and classroom requests
• Tips on book fair distribution
• How to manage in-school author visit orders
• Best practices for orders
• How to establish and manage subscription services with schools
• Best Practices for working with educational publishers

Actress Alyssa Milano is a lifelong activist who is passionate about fighting for human rights. In addition to being named a National Ambassador by UNICEF and a 2017 Person of the Year by Time, Milano speaks to kids around the country about the importance of voting and teaches them how to fill out a ballot. Most recently, Milano popularized the #MeToo hashtag. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two kids.

Elizabeth Acevedo is the author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. She is a National Poetry Slam champion and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Maryland. She lives with her partner in Washington, D.C.

Title 1 schools work with a small number of resources and even smaller budgets to bring authors to student audiences, host book fairs, and keep accounts with independent bookstores. Luckily, many bookstores do manage successful and profitable partnerships with Title 1 schools. Panelists with ongoing success in partnering with Title 1 schools will share with attendees:

• How to approach Title 1 schools
• How these partnerships are effective and profitable
• How to assist a school in maximizing monies received from a granting organization
• How to build community goodwill through partnership with a Title 1 school

Almost every bookstore has a story time, but not every bookstore has a story time that keeps customers coming back again and again. This session is designed to teach attendees:

• The performance aspect of story time and how to turn up the energy
• Tips and tricks to be the best reader in the world
• How to keep little ones engaged
• Ways to adjust your approach when the crowd gets restless
• How to read to kids of all ages

With hundreds of subscription boxes to choose from, how will a customer know that yours is the right one for them? Attendees will learn the following from bookstores that have successful subscription box programs:

• Best practices for marketing
• Inventory control
• Options for special services
• How to select categories
• Fulfillment management
• Order tracking

You don’t need an infinite amount of space to remain competitive in independent bookselling. Bookstores under 1,000 square feet share what they do to maximize their selling space and host events without having to knock down walls. Attendees will learn from panelists who call a small store home:

• The logistics of hosting an in-store event
• Crowd management in a small space
• Inventory management in a small stockroom
• Keeping it fresh with inventive displays

When your wallet is slim and margins are small, every penny counts. But there are little things that can be done every single day to boost a bookstore’s bottom line. Bookstore panelists who have effectively pinched a penny here and saved a penny there will teach attendees:

• How to identify small costs that add up
• Where to look for savings
• Small actions booksellers can take to impact overall savings and sales

Optimize your bookstore search and reordering process by implementing tags and keywords for categories and sub-categories in your point-of-sale system, Edelweiss, and in staff reference documents. Attendees of this session will learn:

• The benefits of using tags and keywords
• Tag and keyword suggestions
• Best practices for implementing tags and keywords
• How to get staff involved

The ABACUS benchmarking report is designed to provide easy-to-understand guidelines for identifying independent bookstore business performance improvement opportunities. If you have never participated in the survey and would like to learn more about reporting to ABACUS-19, which will open in spring 2020, this session will teach you:

• The importance of reporting to ABACUS
• Information you need to prepare to complete the report
• Best practices from booksellers who reported their store's numbers to the 2018 ABACUS
• Actionable steps to take when you return home to prepare for ABACUS-19