e-Newsletter January 7, 2015

In This Issue
Hail and Farewell!
Welcome to New Board Members
Reading the West Book Award Nominations Posted
Sales Reps - Send Us Your Updates!
"The Boss's Book Reviews"
BookBar's Ode to Local Shopping
Indie Bookstores Making a Comeback




Laura Ayrey
Executive Director
MPIBA

435.649.6079 office

435.649.6105 fax  

 

 


Association Information

Send publisher catalogs, author information,
ARCs, and publicity
to Laura:

3278 Big Spruce Way
Park City, UT 84098

  

 

 




Kathy Keel
Project Manager
MPIBA
970.484.3939
970.484.0037 fax
800.752.0249 toll-free


Administration/Projects

Send project-related
questions (Fall Discovery Show, Winter Catalog, Reading the West Book Awards, Website)
plus bills, invoices,
and payments to:


MPIBA Administration
c/o Kathy Keel
208 E. Lincoln Avenue

Fort Collins, CO 80524

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





Mark Your Calendar!


Fall Discovery Show (Trade Show) 2015
October 8-10, 2015
The Renaissance
Denver Hotel








MPIBA Board of Directors:
Hail and Farewell!
From left: Laura Ayrey, Executive Director; Andrea Avantaggio, Maria's Bookshop and Outgoing Board President; Anne Holman, The King's English Bookshop and Incoming Board President; Vicki Law Burger, Wind City Books; Meg Sherman, W.W. Norton & Co.; Claudia Maceo, The Twig Bookshop (not pictured: Heather Duncan)
Farewell to Andrea Avantaggio
Outgoing MPIBA Board President

 


On behalf of the Board of Directors and Laura Ayrey, Executive Director, we would like to extend a heartfelt
"Thank You" to Andrea Avantaggio for serving as President
of the MPIBA Board of Directors for the past three years.

Andrea has been an excellent leader and an even greater mentor to all of us. We will miss her dearly but know that
we have all formed great friendships that will endure for
years to come.

Thank You, Andrea!

Welcome to New Board Members

Heather
Duncan


Tattered Cover
Book Store
Denver, Colorado 
 
Board member
since January 2014
Heather received her bachelor's degree in International Business in the spring of 1989 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. After backpacking around Great Britain and Europe for the summer, she began working at her favorite place to shop, the Tattered Cover Book Store that fall as a holiday bookseller. After the holidays she remained at the bookstore, first in the Ordering Department, and then in Outside Corporate Sales. She left the store briefly in 1995 to work at a local publishing company, then returned to the Tattered Cover to fill the position of Director of Marketing and Community Relations. Prior to joining the Mountains and Plains board in January of 2014, Heather was a member of the MPIBA advisory council for six years, and has been a long-time educator for the organization, teaching classes and sitting on panels. Heather lives with her husband John, son Jack, and black lab Finn in the foothills outside of Denver. 

  

Danielle
Foster

Bookworks
Albuquerque,
New Mexico

Board member 
beginning January 2015 
Danielle is the co-owner of Bookworks in Albuquerque; she and her partner purchased the shop from the original owner in 2010. Danielle started as a bookseller in Ogden, Utah, with B. Dalton Booksellers in 1996 and transferred to San Francisco to manage four stores in the Bay Area. In addition to the shop, she has two kids, Noah and Sarah, a cat named Rose, and a bookshop dog-in-training, named Wilson. 

  

 Julie Wernersbach

BookPeople Bookstore
Austin,Texas

Board member 
beginning January 2015 
Julie is currently the publicist for BookPeople in Austin, Texas where, among other things, she manages BookPeople's active social media presence and helps coordinate events. She previously worked in events and marketing at Book Revue, an independent bookstore in Huntington, Long Island. Julie has been an independent bookseller for nearly a decade. She is also the author of the book VEGAN SURVIVAL GUIDE TO AUSTIN, forthcoming from History Press in February 2015. 

 

Reading the West Book Awards Nominations Posted on Website
RTW Logo 2011

Nominated titles with book jacket images are posted on our website:

Please click here to view.

Please note that this is a preliminary list and is subject to change.

The Reading the West Shortlist will be announced on March 31, 2015; the Winners will be announced on May 30, 2015 and recognized at the Fall Discovery Show, October 8-10, 2015.

Thank you to the publishers, Selection Committee members, and booksellers who have worked with MPIBA to create this stellar list!

Sales Reps!  

Send Us Your Updates  

 


It's a fresh new year ... and time for some fresh information!

In 2013, MPIBA discontinued its printed Handbook and in early 2014 listed Sales Reps on the website, under the navigation tab, "Bookseller Resources."

Please review your individual listing and send questions, updates and changes to: Kathy Keel - info@mountainsplains.org:

www.mountainsplains.org/sales-rep-list-rep-name/

Your changes will be cross-referenced in the "Publisher" list, so you do not need to send changes for both lists.

Thank you to the reps who have already sent information to us ... we are currently updating the website to reflect your changes.

New Offer for Explore Booksellers in Aspen, Colorado

 

The man who was under contract to buy Explore Booksellers, Aspen, Colo., for $4.6 million withdrew his offer last week after someone else made an offer of $5 million, the Aspen Times reported. The sale includes the store's historic--and valuable--Main Street house.

 

Andrew Lessman, founder and owner of ProCaps Laboratories, a vitamin supplement manufacturer and distributor, and a 20-year summer resident who liked the bookstore, told the paper that he wouldn't get into a bidding war and that he had intended to continue the bookstore operation. "There was, I thought, huge potential," he said. "It certainly didn't have to make money. I had to stop the hemorrhaging."

 

Listing broker Karen Setterfield confirmed that there is a new deal but couldn't comment further about it. She did say, however, that the people who've approached her about the property have expressed interest in continuing the business. "Every person that I've talked to wanted a bookstore."

 

Current owner Samuel Wyly filed for bankruptcy protection in October, and his lawyers hope to close on a sale of the store and property by January 21.

 

-Shelf Awareness, January 2, 2015 

 

BookBar's Ode
to Local Shopping

  

'Twas the day before Christmas Eve, when all through the town

Not a shopper was resting as the days counted down

A few items to go on each of their lists

they kept tightly gripped in their sweaty, clutched fists.

  

Malls and big box stores were crammed with the stressed

Cars circled lots to find spots, not even the best

Store clerks were busy and stressed out too

aisles were stacked and packed; it felt like a zoo.

  

I drove away from the hustle and bustle

away from the chains and the threat of a tussle

went straight to my friendly and locally owned shops

where stores were still run by the moms and the pops.

  

I was greeted with warmth and genuine smiles

For this, I gladly would have walked miles

Everyone knew exactly what they sold

and suggested perfect gifts for the young and the old.

  

I went home happy and my shopping was done

Not only that, but it was actually fun!

Never again will I brave angry crowds for a reason:

Independently-owned holds the promise of a most joyous season.

  

-posted by Nicole Sullivan, BookBar owner, and BookBar staff on social media outlets  
Indie Bookstores Aren't Dead -- They're Making A Comeback

For years, journalists have made predictions about the death of independent bookstores: if the chains didn't crush them, Amazon would. If Amazon didn't, they would die anyway because people just weren't reading.

 

For a few years, facts on the ground seemed to support this dire prognosis. During the early years of the new millennium, bookstore after bookstore closed in some of the most reading-friendly cities in America: the Madison Avenue Bookshop in Manhattan (2002), The Oscar Wilde Bookshop in Greenwich Village (2003), Wordsworth's in Cambridge, Mass. (2004), Cody's Books, Berkeley, Calif. (2006). "Every month, it seems, another landmark independent bookstore closes its doors," remarked a contributor to Poets & Writers in 2009.

 

But around the time of that lament, a sea change occurred. Bookshops continued to close, but others began to open. In 2009, the number of independent bookstores in the nation stabilized at around 1,400, and then slowly began to grow. As of last May, the number of indie bookshops in the U.S. was 1,664.

 

Why the turnaround? Part of the reason was the long, slow implosion of one of indie bookselling's biggest competitors: Borders went heavily into CDs and DVDs only to find itself competing with iTunes, and then outsourced its online bookselling to Amazon. The company's last profitable year was 2006. It filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

 

Other factors, such as the buy-local movement and an increase in reading among adult Americans, have helped as well.  

 

But the biggest reason independent bookstores are still around is that the store closures of the previous decade alerted people to what they were in danger of losing.  

 

Author Ann Patchett wrote that when the last two bookstores in her hometown of Nashville closed, "The Nashville Public Library organized community forums for concerned citizens to come together and discuss how we might get a bookstore again." When I first read that passage two years ago, I was struck by the public reaction. A community wouldn't respond like this to the loss of just any business.

 

That's because books, by their very nature, are communal. Reading itself may seem a solitary act, but when we read a book we open ourselves up to the mind of another person, to his or her ideas, to the stories this writer has to tell. And when a book is good, people want to talk about it. Therefore, bookstores themselves are social spaces. Often when I go into a bookstore I notice people animatedly talking in a way they don't in any other type of shop.  

 

For avid readers, a bookstore is as much part of the social fabric of the community as is an old-fashioned town square or a beloved park.

 

For the past year I've been talking to bookstore owners around the country, and it's clear that although bookstores are businesses, a good bookstore is never just a business.

 

-The Huffington Post, November 29, 2014