The NCIBA in Pictures

Jonathan Lethem was on hand at the office recently to sign copies of his new novel Chronic City for bookstores..

Margaret Atwood signing copies of The Year of the Flood in our office on October 5, 2009. Photo by Carol Seajay.

Alexander McCall Smith visited the NCIBA office on a recent Sunday to sign copies of his new book, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, for booksellers. Photo by Joyce Ripp.

Mary Roach signs copies of Bonk after her uproarious morning talk at the NCIBA’s recent Spring Gathering. Photo by Joyce Ripp.

T.C. Boyle signing copies of his new book The Women in the NCIBA office. Photo by Joyce Ripp.

The NCIBA welcomed first-time novelist Paul Harding, author of Tinkers, to the office recently for a meet-and-greet with booksellers. Photo by Joyce Ripp.

Annie Leibovitz signing her new book Annie Leibovitz at Work (Random House), at the NCIBA office. Photo by Joyce Ripp.

The Art of the Blurb

Wendy Sheanin, Director of Marketing for the Adult Publishing Group at Simon & Schuster, recently created a great show-and-tell flier on blurb writing (380KB PDF) and why it’s important. The flier has been making the rounds among publishers and booksellers, so we wanted to reproduce it here for any interested booksellers.

NCIBA Trade Show A Big Hit

A change of schedule and reconfigured trade show floor were hailed by exhibitors and attendees alike at this year’s NCIBA trade show. After years of a Saturday-Sunday show, we shifted to a Friday-Saturday exhibit schedule in an effort to attract more bookstore staff. And, recognizing exhibitors’ desire to cut back on space requirements, we shrank both the show floor and the size of the table islands.

The results? Steady attendance on both exhibit days and raves across the board for a more intimate show floor. Given the challenging economic times, we were pleased that our bookseller attendance stayed level with last year and that 110 member stores were represented.

More importantly, both Friday and Saturday were mostly active days on the floor and nearly 500 orders were placed with exhibitors, underscoring both the importance of a two-day show and the value of eliminating Sunday.

We have posted a few trade show items and will be adding photos soon. In the meantime, you can download materials of interest, including lists from the Not Your Typical Rep Picks event (54KB PDF) and the Small Press/University Press Rep Picks session (51KB PDF), as well as a copy of the list of talking points and resources created for the Bookseller Roundtables (64KB PDF) by Heather Lyon from Lyon Books, and a brief critique of the three technology-focused workshops (42KB PDF).

The 2010 NCIBA show will be held on Thursday October 14 – Saturday, October 16 at the Oakland Convention Center and City Center Marriott.

Paperback Dreams filmmaker, SF Chronicle Books Editor, BookSmart Among Those Honored at Trade Show

At the NCIBA’s annual membership meeting at the trade show, a number of awards were handed out, including three to Friends of Independent Bookselling (FIBS) and several to bookstores and booksellers.

This years FIBS were awarded to Alex Beckstead, the Paperback Dreams filmmaker who has helped many stores use video to effectively market their stores; Noah and Logan Miller, twin brothers who partnered with independent bookstores in creating innovative promotion and marketing activities for their book Either You’re In Or You're In the Way; and John McMurtrie, Books editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, who introduced the weekly Top Shelf feature to his section and made the NCIBA/IndieBound bestseller list the Chronicle’s weekly list as well.

The NCIBA also presented awards for Outstanding Handselling, given to the staff of Bookshelf in Hooligan Rocks, Truckee, and Mary McCulloch Fox of Mrs. Dalloway’s, and Outstanding Events, preesented to Modern Times Bookstore. The annual Debi Echlin Outstanding community Bookstore Award was presented to Brad Jones and Cinda Meister, co-owners of BookSmart in Morgan Hill.

New NCIBA Bookstore Blogs Page

We now have a page with the latest posts from blogs written by NCIBA members. Check it out!

Top Shelf Picks

We are sending the list weekly to booksellers, and we are also posting the information on our bestsellers page. There you’ll also find the week’s Top Shelf list — 10 recommended new titles from an independent bookstore.

IndieBound.org Affiliate Program Grows by Leaps and Bounds

The IndieBound.org Affiliate Program is unique in that it links to not one, but hundreds of independent bookstore websites. And this week the program, which pays generous commissions to bloggers, authors, and other website owners on sales their sites refer to independent bookstores, launched the first of several planned enhancements.

“The IndieBound.org Affiliate Program is the best way for bloggers to express their commitment to free speech, diversity, and shopping local,” said ABA Chief Marketing Officer Meg Smith.

“In light of the recent news about Amazon, many prominent bloggers are reconsidering where their links for book sales go,” added IndieBound Outreach Liaison Paige Poe. “A lot of them have recently signed up for IndieBound’s Affiliate Program.”

IndieBound.org Affiliate Program improvements introduced this week include:

• Affiliates can now link to any page on IndieBound.org, such as the Indie Next List, the results of a book search, or their Wish List. Previously, affiliates could only link directly to specific titles for sale.
• When a consumer follows an affiliate’s link, IndieBound.org sets a session cookie in their browser. This cookie ensures that the affiliate receives credit for additional sales generated through the visit, not just for the landing page.
• The URL syntax for affiliate links has been simplified, making it easier for affiliates to code their own links, or automate the process of creating links on their blog or website.
• Affiliate IDs are now connected to user accounts on IndieBound.org, making it easy for affiliates to update their own contact and payment information.

Future improvements will include:

• Attractive, flexible JavaScript widgets that can display Indie Bestseller Lists, the Indie Next List, the affiliate’s Wish List, or any custom list of books. These widgets will be available soon in a variety of shapes and sizes with a completely customizable palette of colors.
• Plug-ins for WordPress, TypePad, and other blogging platforms.
• Integrated sales reporting on IndieBound.org. Affiliates will be able to review detailed reports of traffic and sales their links have generated.

The IndieBound Affiliate Program passes sales through IndieBound.org to bookstore websites participating in the ABA E-Commerce Solution. “In order for the affiliate to receive credit for any sales that result, the bookseller’s site must track the affiliate’s data and report it back to IndieBound.org,” Web Content Coordinator Matt Supko explained. “Currently, ABA E-Commerce Solution sites are the only websites capable of doing this.”

Visitors to IndieBound.org who do not follow affiliate links also have the option to buy through other e-commerce-capable independent bookseller websites. All ABA Member stores appear, along with links to their websites, on the Indie Store Finder map, in the site search, and elsewhere on IndieBound.org.

Questions about the affiliate program should be addressed to Project Manager Patti Neske at patti@bookweb.org or (800) 637-0037, ext 6653. Questions about IndieBound should be addressed to Paige Poe at paige@bookweb.org  or (800) 637-0037, ext 6668.