Candice Huber, SIBA's membership coordinator, has been collecting ideas and tips from bookstores on how they use their Summer and Winter catalogs. It is full of great ideas for making the catalog program successful for bookstores of all sizes and business models. Here are a few from the list. We'll be sharing more in the coming weeks.:

• Prepare your staff to handsell catalog titles by reading DRCs provided in the catalog Edelweiss collection.
• Send a physical catalog to everyone who has ordered from you online and had something shipped to them (including Bookshop.org customers).
• Mail catalogs to your top 50 customers with a handwritten thank-you note.
• If you’re in a tourist location, make sure to imprint your catalogs with your store info, website, and/or Bookshop.org and Libro.fm sites, and hand them out to tourists to promote ordering from you online when they get back home.
• Use the catalog to bring people to your social media community. By including your Instagram or TikTok handle with a note to find online sales, gifts, fun and games you can cross-promote between your catalogs, in-store displays, and online social media, and generate excitement about your store in both the real and the virtual world.
• Integrate the catalog into your fundraising efforts. If your store normally raises money or collects donations for a local cause during the holidays, the imprint area on the catalog can be used to promote these efforts. The organization you are working with can also distribute catalogs on your behalf as part of the campaign.

Order the Winter Catalog