SIBA has received its first report of reviews booksellers have submitted on Edelweiss using the new "send to SIBA" option. A big thanks to Copperfish Books, Avid Bookshop, Turnrow Books, Page 158, The Country Bookshop, Fiction Addiction, Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe, Flyleaf Books and Sunrise Books

Here are some of the books they are talking about:

The Promise by Minrose Gwin | 9780062471710 | February, 2018
Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro | 9780802127044 | January, 2018
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones | 9781616201340 | February, 2018
The Afterlives by Thomas Pierce* | 9781594632532 | January, 2018
The Gods of Howl Mountain by Taylor Brown | 9781250111777 | March, 2018
The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin | 9781101886809 } January, 2018
Only Killers and Thieves by Paul Howarth | 9780062690968 | February, 2018
The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld | 9780735229358 | February, 2018

*Thomas Pierce's first book, Halls of Small Mammals, was a Okra Pick

If your store does not have an Edelweiss account and need help setting one up, contact Linda-Marie. She'd love to help.

Web-versions, resources, and special offers are now available

Bookstores using Indiecommerce can now add the holiday catalog to their websites. Member stores can link to the online catalog using either 1 of the following 2 ways.

1. http://yoursitename.com/holiday/SIBA - replace the bold portion with the name of your website, for example: http://fountainbookstore.com/holiday/SIBA

2. http://yoursitename.com/holiday/SIBA/holidaycatalog.html - replace the bold portion with the name of your website, for example:
http://fountainbookstore.com/holiday/SIBA/holidaycatalog.html

The Web-versions of the SIBA holiday catalog is now available to stores to post on their websites. We think they look very nice! See a demo version

You earn 5 B3! points for posting the holiday catalog on your site.

What SIBA is doing to help:

Create opportunities for your customers to support you beyond buying books

Crowdsource funding for bookstores (Publishers Weekly).
Crowdsource sustain campaign (Firestorm Books, Asheville, NC)

TRIO: We ran a BookLab at City Lights in Sylva, NC with the final showing of TRIO 2017.  SIBA covered a one hour staff meeting with Shari Smith where all of City Lights staff experience the exhibit for themselves and were prepared in the selling of the titles and the sharing of the exhibit with customers.  Chris Wilcox of City Lights was delighted to report the store sold nearly 40 copies of TRIO titles in the month of August when TRIO was up in the store. 

Okra: Fiction Addiction in Greenville, SC, and Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, NC are the first two stores to sell over 100 Okra Pick titles in the three month window selling across all of the Okra titles but for two.  Congratulations to these stores.  Here's a picture of Fiction Addiction's display:

"We use our Okra Pick display and the accompanying bookmarks as suggestions for our local book clubs looking for great new Southern reads. It makes it easy for us, and the customers love taking the bookmarks to discuss with their fellow book club members."
-- Jill Hendrix, Fiction Addiction, Greenville, SC

"Having hosted the TRIO Project for the second year, we continue to be impressed by the breadth of creativity packed into such a compact exhibit. The two singer/songwriters who accompanied the curator for the TRIO Live component were absolutely amazing talents. Best of all, sales from our display of the TRIO titles were robust and news of the exhibit brought in several new customers."
-- Chris Wilcox, City Lights, Sylva, NC

The Bookseller's guide to TRIO | The Bookseller's guide to the Okra Picks | Sign up for the Okra Picks Newsletter

Maximizing Backlist Sales

To help booksellers evaluate the advantages of backlist offers, ABA has created a convenient new buying tool, the Backlist Buying Calculator, a self-calculating Excel sheet designed to calculate and analyze a store's backlist buying savings. 

Full details here

Saturday Display materials available: Shop Small Studio DIY

At Wi12 this past year, Kelly Justice of Fountain Bookstore gave a very popular session on building social media events. Surprise, surprise, despite its reputation for immediacy and instanteous gratification, a good social media event requires careful advance preparation.

Here's a link to the checklist and timeline Kelly uses when preparing her store's social media event -- as a step-by-step guide it is invaluable.

More at the Peer Brain Trust

Do you use an online scheduling program for your employees?

Results from last week's survey, "Do you nominate Okra Picks?"

Don't forget! B3! Webinars, EUREKAsiba, and Small Business Saturday-- all this and more in last week's issue of In the Land of SIBA

Renew here | Booksellers Benefits Package