GLBA/ABA FORUM & SEMINAR SLATED FOR CINCINNATI

The second ABA/GLBA Forum of this year in our region will be held in Cincinnati on Tuesday, March 30, in the offices of one of our newest publishers, Emmis Books. All GLBA and ABA members are invited to attend to hear about the new gift card program, participate in the give and take of the forum, and attend the seminar, which will give targeted techniques for improving profitable. Here are the details:

GLBA/ABA Forum & Seminar
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
11:00 – 3:30
At the Offices of Emmis Books
The Old Fire House
1700 Madison Road
Cincinnati, OH 45206

The Program

10:00 – Registration Begins
After you get your name tag and a cup of coffee, watch the documentary “Reading Your Rights” about the Tattered Cover Subpoena. Or discuss BookScan and other forms of bestseller list reporting with Jim Dana or Rita Williams of GLBA. Or network with your colleagues and staff of GLBA and ABA.

11:00 – Book Sense Gift Cards
Come early and see a demonstration of the new Book Sense Gift Card Program…how it works and how easy it is to get started....along with some specific case studies about bookstore experiences this past holiday season after they converted from paper to plastic! Attendees can win a free $25 gift card!

12 Noon - 1:45pm - ABA Open Forum (Lunch Provided!)
Your chance to hear and talk about current industry issues....as well as ABA programs and services..... Sales taxes; Patriots Act repeal; net-pricing proposals; BEA; Book Sense (its 5th birthday is this year, by the way!); ABACUS; LIBRIS; etc. Lunch will be provided. As in the past, these sessions are designed to talk about those subjects on booksellers' minds....everything and/or anything you want to talk about is germane!!!

2:00-3:30 - The 2% Solution
The 2003 ABACUS Study of independent bookshop operations showed that the average profitability of all 197 participants was -1.67%. This seminar looks at the drivers of profitability and examines the steps to be taken to help make independent bookstores profitable businesses. The session will show exactly how a bookseller can work on sales, gross margin, compensation and occupancy expenses. While moving from negative profitability to a positive 2% is a long journey, this seminar will help us to start drawing the road map.

posted by Jim at Tuesday, February 10, 2004

VIRUS WARNING

Just in case you haven’t heard about it yet, there is a new, extremely virulent computer “Worm” spreading through computer systems via e-mail.
The emails typically have these words in the subject line: HI, Hello, Status, Test, Error etc. They all have an attachment called something like: text.zip or data.zip or body.zip

DO NOT CLICK ON THESE ATTACHMENTS. In fact, a good practice we now follow in our office is not to even open emails whose senders we do not recognize and/or which do not have a recognizable connection with our activities.

To read more about this virus and to download a detection and removal utility, go to this page:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.novarg.a@mm.html

Regards, Jim

posted by Jim at Thursday, January 29, 2004

MEMBER DIRECTORIES & “GRASSROOTS CAFÉ” ON THE GLBA WEBSITE

Directories of Bookstore Members and Other Members (publishers, sales reps, authors, etc.) are now accessible on the GLBA website, http://www.books-glba.org/grass-roots-cafe.php. Our “Grass Roots Café” – a menu of elected officials in the four main GLBA states – is also accessible on our website, complete with hyperlinks to make your contacts with officials even faster. You can get to both the directories and the Grass Roots Café in the Who’s Who dropdown menu.

NOMINATE DESERVING BOOKSTORES FOR THE HASLAM AWARD

The Charles S. Haslam Award for Excellence in Bookselling was created in honor of a great bookman who was one of the driving forces in the industry for improving the professional development and delivery of high quality service. Sponsored by the Southeast Booksellers Association and Ingram Book Company, the award has been made annually since 1985. The GLBA is home to many great booksellers and has garnered its share of Haslam winners: Joe & Annye Camara of Books & Co, Dayton, Ohio, in 1988; Roberta Rubin of Book Stall at Chestnut Court, Winnetka, Illinois, in 1993; and Becky Anderson Wilkins of Anderson’s Bookshops, Naperville, Illinois, in 2002.

Which GLBA booksellers should be nominated this year? Go to the SEBA website,
http://www.sebaweb.org/Awards/Haslam/hasnom.htm, to make your nominations online. We’ll also print a copy of the nomination for in the next newsletter. Booksellers are judged on the following criteria: demonstrated in buying and merchandising; store operations; advertising and promotion; and community service. Nominations are due March 10.

posted by Jim at Wednesday, January 28, 2004

VOTE FOR THE BEST BOOKS OF BOOK SENSE

Book Sense will celebrate its fifth birthday this year. One of the ways we intend to observe it is by picking the “Best” of the Book Sense books of the first five years. So please take part by making your picks known. The deadline for nominations is Monday, February 16. All bookstore employees are encouraged to vote. Though they must be ABA members, they do not have to be a Book Sense store.

Here are the links to the ABA website, with the details as well as the actual form:

January 13, 2004: BTW Announcement: http://news.bookweb.org/news/2129.html
January 27, 2004: BTW Reminder http://news.bookweb.org/2157.html
BookWeb Info Page: http://www.bookweb.org/booksense/6665.html
Voting Ballot for Adult Books: http://www.bookweb.org/docs/booksenseat5/AdultBallot04.pdf
Voting Ballot for Children's Books: http://www.bookweb.org/docs/booksenseat5/KidBallot04.pdf

posted by Jim at Monday, January 26, 2004

Regional Access Due Next Week

Publisher members: The January “Regional Access” is to be emailed next week to the GLBA Listserve. Do you have titles that you’d like to feature? Please email me with your information by Wednesday, January 28. If you have questions about the Regional Access Program, go to “For Publishers” on the GLBA website, www.books-glba.org.

posted by Jim at Thursday, January 22, 2004

PATRIOT ACT PETITION CAMPAIGN UNDER WAY

Two weeks ago, the ABA launched a petition campaign to gather signatures of bookstore customers who support amending Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which stripped away protections for customer privacy. The goal is to garner at least one million signatures. The text of the petition reads as follows:

“USA Patriot Act vs. Your FREADOM. Tell Congress to Restore Reader Privacy Today! The USA Patriot Act threatens your privacy in bookstores and librarires. It gives the FBI power to apply to a secret court for an order compelling the surrender of records of the books you purchase or borrow. The government does not have to produce any evidence that you are a terrorist – or even that you are suspected of a crime! The order also gags booksellers and librarians, making it illegal to reveal that your records have been searched. We, the undersigned, urge our representatives in Congress to support legislation that amends Section 215 of the Patriot Act to restore the privacy of our bookstore and library records.”

You may download a copy of the petition at http://www.bookweb.org/graphics/pdfs/abffe_petition.pdf. You can order buttons, bumper stickers, T-shirts and other materials sporting the FREADOM logo from the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. Order throught the ABFFE store at www.abffe.com or 212-587-4025.

posted by Jim at Monday, January 19, 2004

Call for Bookseller of the Year Nominations

Publishers Weekly seeks nominations from book industry professionals for the 2004 PW Bookseller of the Year Award. Nominees should operate a professional storefront retail bookstore in the U.S. and excel in the following areas: buying and vendor relations, marketing, handselling, customer care, community involvement, management-employee relations, merchandising and business operations. Bookstores cannot nominate themselves. Please submit your nomination by midnight Monday, January 26, to Donna Paz Kaufman at mailto:dpaz@pazbookbiz.com or fax 904/261-6742 and include your name, phone number and industry affiliation.

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42 Attend Chicago Forum

Forty-two booksellers representing 27 bookstores attended the GLBA-ABA Forum on Thursday, February 15. The Forum, the first of two to be held in GLBA territory this year (the other will be in Cincinnati on March 30), was held at Chicago’s Allerton Crowne Plaza, the hotel that will be the “ABA Bookseller Hotel” at this year’s BEA.

Prior to the Forum itself, Oren Teicher, ABA COO, and Avin Domnitz, ABA CEO, gave a workshop on the electronic gift cards that ABA introduced last fall. Discussion ranged from the nuts and bolts of the system to customer response and how to merchandise them. The “coolness factor” of gift cards appears to be a big issue. Look for a detailed story in the next issue of Great Lakes Bookseller.

The Forum itself, conducted over a free lunch provided courtesy of ABA and GLBA, ranged over a wide number of issues ranging from the scheduled expansion of the ISBN and use of UPC codes to the current state of business and pitfalls for new booksellers and ended with a lengthy, stimulating discussion on where Book Sense and Booksense.com go next.

posted by Jim at Friday, January 16, 2004