Anyone who has attended a regional trade show or the American Booksellers Association's Winter Institute or Children's Institute has had the chance to play "Heads or Tails" -- the popular game/fundraiser the last person standing takes home a $500 prize. If you haven't played, you have at least watched, smiling as your colleagues, adorned with flashing pins, tried to decide whether to put their hands on their heads ("heads") or their rears ("tails"). A coin is flipped, heads or tails is called, and pins are turned off as players guess wrong. Every pin represents a $20 donation to Binc. The more pins a player is wearing, the longer they can stay in the game, but eventually only one person is left, still blinking.

At the SIBA Discovery Show the Binc Heads or Tails Fundraiser is one of the last events of the show -- held on the exhibit floor amid a general air of hilarity as booksellers, exhibitors, and even authors ham it up trying to stay on their feet until the end. The event has proved so popular -- and is for such a good cause -- that many authors in the show program who can't stay for the whole weekend arrange for proxys to stand in for them so they can still play. The lucky winner of this year's contest was Rebecca Kauffman, author of The House on Fripp Island, due out in June of 2020.

The fundraiser, which was sponsored by SIBA, raised approximately $3500.

So what, exactly, were all those folks doing by wearing flashy pins and patting their heads?

They were helping SIBA booksellers in need.

"Within 24 hours, Kit called to report that Binc was stepping in to assist with several months of rent payments. What a godsend. It was like I could breathe again." -- Jamie Anderson, Downtown Books & Duck's Cottage, Outer Banks, NC, after Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael

Binc exists to be a safety net for booksellers facing a financial crisis. This has special significance for bookstores in SIBA territory, which face severe natural disasters and weather events with increasing rapidity. Rarely does the South make it through a hurricane season without some of our stores being affected -- by flooding, building damage, lost inventory, lost work, lost wages. Here is what Binc has done for SIBA booksellers since 2014:

• Bookstore Disaster Recovery: 2 grants for a total of $12,073
  
• Disaster Relief: 2 grants for a total of $7,975
  
• Financial Assistance: 27 grants for a total of $62,678
  
• Matching Grants: 5 grants fora total of $10,000

All in all, Binc has provided more than $92,000 in aid to Southern bookstores in the last five years. They have helped booksellers pay their rent, keep the lights on, meet serious medical expenses, and provide immediate disaster assistance.

That means if you have ever played "Heads or Tails" with Binc and didn't win, you still won. Your contribution has strengthened the bookselling community by directly benefiting its booksellers.