e-Newsletter January 6, 2017

In This Issue
Hail and Farewell to MPIBA Board Members!
Goodbye to Meg Sherman
Welcome to Phoebe Gaston
MPIBA 2017 Spring Meeting Slated
News from our Bookstores
Welcome to Magic City Books
Ribbon Cutting for Another Chapter Bookstore
The Bookworm of Edwards Celebrates 20 Years




Laura Ayrey Burnett
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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Hail and Farewell to
MPIBA Board Members!
Goodbye to Meg Sherman

Meg Sherman has been with W. W. Norton & Company since 2004. She is the Norton sales rep for a seven-state region, selling to independent bookstores in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming; she also reps in Florida.

Before 2004, she was a bookseller at The Chinook Bookshop in Colorado Springs for a dozen years, where she served as the store's manager in its final years.

Meg graduated from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where she majored in English, History, and American Studies. For fun, she loves to read history.



Meg Sherman

Meg's hobbies include reading, hiking, biking, knitting, and playing European board games (not as unusual as it sounds). Meg has also been practicing Tai Chi Chuan for nearly 10 years and has a black belt in this martial art.

Meg says, "I cannot imagine my life without books and nothing makes me happier than having the opportunity to talk about books with other book lovers."

Thank You to Meg from Laura Burnett:
On a personal note, as the Executive Director of MPIBA, I'd like to thank Meg Sherman for her dedication to the Board of Directors and the Association as a whole over the years. As many of  you may know, this was not Meg's first time serving on the Board of Directors. For Meg to take on yet another term shows how much she values Mountains & Plains and works hard to see it succeed.

Along with her service as a Board Member, Meg also took the helm as the Board Liaison to the Advisory Council for the past few years. I'm sure I echo their sentiments when I say we will ALL miss having Meg on the Board as well as managing the AC, which she did so brilliantly. Thank you for everything, Meg!
Welcome to Phoebe Gaston

Phoebe Gaston has been a publishers' sales representative since 2007 when she graduated from the Denver Publishing Institute after getting her BA in English with a minor in Journalism.

She has represented publishers in both the Mountains & Plains and northern California regions, as well as Hawaii.

Phoebe recently made the move back to Denver. Her current territory with Book Travelers West is Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, New Mexico, eastern Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming.
 
Phoebe Gaston

Phoebe does, in fact, like long walks on the beach, skiing, and hiking. She has two dogs, one old lab named Roger, and recently a new foster she's calling Tuna Pancake.

She loves reading (of course), and grew up collecting Boxcar Children books - and now she sells them for Albert Whitman.
 

MPIBA's 2017 Spring Meeting
Tattered Cover Book Store in LoDo, downtown Denver
Mark Your Calendars!
MPIBA's annual Spring Meeting is slated for Wednesday, March 22, 2017, in Denver.

An educational program and lunch for member booksellers will be provided by the American Booksellers Association, and MPIBA will host an update and bookseller discussion after lunch. The location for the day's programming will be announced soon.

The Author Reception will be held at The Tattered Cover Book Store's LoDo location at 1628 16th Street in Denver, Colorado.

More information and an online bookseller registration form will be available soon.
 

News from Our Bookstores
Welcome New Bookstore!
Magic City Books
Magic City Books: "Our Heroes Have Always Been Authors"
When Magic City Books, a project of the Tulsa Literary Coalition, opens early in 2017,
it will offer the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a carefully curated selection of literary fiction and narrative nonfiction along with lectures, panels, book discussions, poetry readings, and writing workshops.

Magic City Books will operate as a for-profit bookstore in support of the literary coalition,
a not-for-profit organization started by former Tulsa City librarian Cindy Hulsey and Jeff Martin, the founder of Booksmart Tulsa, a literary organization that coordinates author events throughout the city.

Hulsey said that income from Magic City will enable the coalition to become self-sustaining in its mission to "celebrate the literary arts as a catalyst for reflection, exploration, and connection."

"Magic City Books will be a great hub for what we are doing through the coalition."
"The idea for the Tulsa Literary Coalition came about after our one independent bookstore in town closed in 2013 or 2014, and we felt like we were seeing the literary community shrink," said Martin. "We created it as a 501(c)3 based on the idea of promoting a literary community, and we thought that maybe the best vehicle to drive that mission would be a physical bookstore. Magic City Books will be a great hub for what we are doing through the coalition."

Over the years, Martin said, Booksmart has brought close to 300 authors to different venues around town,
including Stephen King, Salman Rushdie, Krista Tippett, Lisa See, Yann Martel, David Sedaris, and Elizabeth Gilbert. Now, Magic City Books will provide a brand-new physical venue for Booksmart's events. Opening a bookstore, Martin said, had always been in the back of his mind, and he knew he would love to work with Hulsey, with whom he had teamed up many times for events at the library.

"What we have now is a ... sustainable model."
"Jeff and I looked at different models for for-profit bookstore/nonprofit organization hybrids; we did a lot of research, and ultimately this is how we decided to approach it. What we have now is a really nice sustainable model," said Hulsey, who will serve as the general manager of Magic City Books and as executive director of the Tulsa Literary Coalition. Martin, who will be president of the coalition's board of directors, will be heavily involved with but not directly employed by the bookstore, which will merge with Booksmart.
Magic City Books: Artist's Rendering of Bookstore
Magic City Books will serve as the anchor tenant in a 1920s-era building
located at the corner of Archer Street and Detroit Avenue in the vibrant Brady Arts District, which is home to a variety of museums, restaurants, and an urban park. The building, which houses 10 other retail tenants, is currently undergoing extensive renovations by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, a charity that has been working on refurbishing Tulsa's historic downtown district. The foundation originally approached Martin to see if he would be willing to open a bookstore in the space.

Magic City Books will be located in a 3,700-square-foot space, which will include a 1,800 square-foot sales floor; a small café selling tea, coffee, sweet and savory treats, beer, and wine; and a meeting/event space, as well as the offices of the Tulsa Literary Coalition. Hulsey, who will not be running the day-to-day operations of the bookstore, plans to hire four managers and about six part-time employees working 20 hours per week.

"The store is a beautiful space with wooden floors and wood wainscoting and beautiful old wallpaper. It is just a really welcoming place,"
said Hulsey, adding that the Kaiser Foundation will use the building's second floor for an artists- and writers-in-residence program starting in January. Magic City will partner with the program for events.

The Tulsa Literary Coalition's advisory board
includes authors Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, Blake Bailey, Ann Patchett, Salman Rushdie, Nancy Pearl, David Sedaris, Lane Smith, Teresa Miller, and Ayelet Waldman, all of whom have agreed to endorse Magic City's mission.

-To read the full article in Bookselling This Week, please click here.
Another Chapter Bookstore
Opens in Owasso, Oklahoma 
Owner Karen Barros at Another Chapter's Ribbon Cutting Ceremony
Ribbon Cutting Held on January 5, 2017
The Owasso Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon cutting ceremony on January 5, 2017, for Another Chapter Bookstore, located in Tyann Plaza, 9455 North Owasso Expressway, in Owasso, Oklahoma.

Congratulations to Karen Barros!
Another Chapter Bookstore, an MPIBA member since January 2016, opened its doors in November 2016. Owassoisms, a community organization, states, "For years we have heard 'Owasso needs a book store' and now you have it. Another Chapter Bookstore is now open in Tyann Plaza. They carry books for the entire family, and have a Java Dave's Coffee Bar too! If you have not already gone by, stop in and see them soon!"
The Bookworm of Edwards
Celebrates 20 Years
Nicole Magistro, owner of The Bookworm of Edwards
(with her favorite backlist book)
The Bookworm of Edwards in Edwards, Colorado is celebrating 20 years in 2017!

Today, the Bookworm operates in a corner space in the busy Riverwalk shopping center, but the store came from humble beginnings.

The Bookworm of Edwards was founded in 1996 in a retro-fitted van that traveled between coffee shops selling new books to "down-valley" readers.

In 1997, a 700-square-foot store opened in Edwards Village Center.  In 2002, Nicole Magistro was hired as a part-time bookseller, and, in 2005, she bought out one of the original owners.

In 2007, the Bookworm moved to its current Riverwalk location (and opened the cafe), and it expanded again in 2010! 

Read the full story (with more details on store founders Kathy Westover and Neda Jansen, and cafe founder Kristi Allio) by clicking here.