Podcast

The rights of readers and the importance of representation in books is critical to the work of independent bookstores. The wave of book bans threaten these rights and these values as an orchestrated movement attempting to silence historically marginalized voices and experiences. As authors, publishers, and booksellers are under constant attack from random and targeted book bans, ABA has assembled a diverse group to discuss the effects of these bans.
Heather Hall from Green Feather Book Company; Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer ; Laura DeLaney from Rediscovered Books; and Kendrick Washington, Policy Advocacy Director of the Seattle ACLU, will share their experiences as well as their insight and wisdom on how to deal with an increasingly pervasive occurrence. The discussion will be moderated by Ray Daniels, Chief Communications Officer of ABA. Gather here to understand first hand what is at stake when book bans happen in your community and how you can respond or even prevent them.

For people in historically marginalized communities, having a space to exist, work, play, and connect can be a powerful thing. There are many ways to honor your community by creating space, and this panel will feature four booksellers who have done just that. You will leave this session with great hope for the future and promise of bookselling and with new ideas for creating space for the communities to which you belong.

A school partnership is an important asset to any bookstore. It strengthens the community, introduces books to younger readers, generates future customers, and supports a bookstore’s bottom line. This session is a bookstore-presented panel on how to best establish school connections from square one. Booksellers will learn first steps to take to begin a healthy partnership, key roles in school administration to get to know, how to work with teachers, and what events and means of support a bookstore can provide to create trust and put the store front of mind when opportunities arise. Presented by the ABC Children’s Group for all booksellers.

This session will offer insight into the small data sets you didn’t know you had and how to mine data to better focus your efforts. Information from POS reports, one-question customer surveys, and even understanding store traffic patterns can make the difference between a good day and a great one.

A big challenge for all bookstores is the volume and management of publisher invoices. In this session, you’ll hear from Batch colleagues and current Batch users about how they save time and money using Batch to manage their invoices and prepare payments to publishing partners. The session will include discussion and demonstrations with focus on how Batch:
- Automatically and electronically organizes invoices to reduce paperwork and free up time.
- Provides access to invoice information 24x7, enabling you to manage invoices when it’s most convenient for you.
- Provides electronic invoices, allowing you to verify shipments and raise claims for damages or shortages at the point of delivery.
- Allows payments to be prepared and remittances received and stored electronically.
- Links with QuickBooks; enabling automated entry of invoice data directly into QuickBooks.

Gen Z — ages 10 to 25 years old — is the largest population in the world. Come to this fun panel where members of Gen Z will share their thoughts on merchandise, marketing, and partnerships that engage this essential group of readers with buying power. Presented by the ABC Children’s Group for all booksellers.

Whether you refer to them as sidelines, non-book, or gift merchandise, they're important to the profitability and customer experience for many bookstores. Come to this panel to gain insight into the process of curating, merchandising, and selling sidelines.

The last few years have revealed the realities of the impact of long-term stress and burnout. Join this conversation with Dr. Corey Yeager, author of How Am I Doing?: 40 Conversations to Have with Yourself, (HarperCollins Christian) and Christine Onorati, ABA board member, bookseller and therapist, as they discuss skills to manage self-care. Topics will include communicating your needs, respecting your limitations, normalizing conversations about mental health and overall well-being, and more.

Employers use diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to create a more equitable, inclusive, and dynamic workforce. Designing and developing a DEI program involves four main phases:
1) Data collection and analysis to determine the need for change;
2) Strategy design to match business objectives;
3) Implementation;
4) Evaluation and continuing audit of the plan.
This session will be lead by Jason Thompson, author of Diversity and Inclusion Matters: Tactics and Tools to Inspire Equity and Game-Changing Performance (Wiley). Booksellers will leave this session with practical implementation ideas to begin a DEI program for their store.

Join Michelle MiJung Kim, award-winning author of The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change, and Hannah Oliver Depp of Loyalty Bookstores for a thought-provoking conversation about how each of us can — and must — be a part of creating a more equitable world. Drawing upon her lived experiences as a queer immigrant woman of color and her work across various industries, Michelle MiJung Kim will share how to move beyond performative allyship to building real solidarity toward social change. Known for her compassionate criticality, Kim’s session is one you won’t want to miss.

Whether your store or a portion of your bookstore is classified by the IRS as a nonprofit or not, you can still raise funds by applying for grants. Come to this session to learn more about the art and science of grant writing for both nonprofit and for-profit bookstores.

What is a book fair if not a mobile and pop-up bookstore appearing at different times at various locations? In this session, bookstores with robust and successful book fair programs will share how to apply their book fair business principles of inventory management, set up, and execution to the inventive business models of pop-up and mobile bookstores. Presented by the ABC Children’s Group for all booksellers.

This session is a celebration of the symbiotic relationships between independent bookstores and other literary institutions. Featuring representatives from Town Hall Seattle and Hugo House, as well as booksellers who have relationships with these institutions. The panelists will highlight how their partnerships began and will discuss the creative and successful results of these ongoing collaborations.

Many bookstores have found creative financial stability and community buy-in through the nonprofit model. Others have added a nonprofit component to their business. By recognizing the intrinsic social and community benefits of independent bookstores, these bookstore owners have moved beyond the retail model and transitioned some or all of their business into a nonprofit organization. Hear from a panel of booksellers who will walk you through a brief overview of how and why they chose to operate in this way.

If you are a user of Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, and you haven’t yet examined your user analytics from these platforms, today is the day! This workshop will teach you how to access analytics on each of these platforms and interpret the data in order to spot trends. Bring your laptop and get ready to dive into your data. But wait, there’s more! Bring what you learn in this workshop to the session tomorrow at 9:05 am, Using Your Social Media Data to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan, and learn how to use your social media analytics data to create a more personalized and relevant marketing plan.