MCCOY GRANT APPLICATIONS CLOSE ON 3/21

There is still time to take advantage of this unique grant for bookseller-writers. This $1500 grant was specifically created by Winston-Salem author Sarah McCoy to help booksellers pursuing a writing career.

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More financial assistance for booksellers.

March 19: Inklings, Lakeland FL
Sustainability Through Trade and Treasure-Hunting
See the complete schedule and register

Inklings offers their community a diverse selection of books that include used, new, and antiques. Attendees will learn how Inklings values sustainability, as reflected in their trade-in program, which gives books extended shelf life through the journey from new to used, and offers the store a way to replenish inventory and grow customer loyalty and repeat visits. They will also discover some fun facts about the antique book world and how to find hidden treasure in old books.

Store owner Finley Walker says "One of our core values is sustainability through the sharing and reuse of books. We believe trade programs help to reduce wasteful overproduction, grow readership through lower stake consumer investment, and build a community consciousness of commercial sustainability." The importance of community is also why Walker asked to host a March Madness event: "We wanted to join in the larger bookseller and booklover community to both learn and teach for the mutual benefit of our communities."

The spring titles on the Read This Next! Kids list for March and April include books for all "young readers" -- from picture books to middle grade to young adult. The themes cover a wide range as well; "family" and "friendship," are important topics that keep coming up. But then, there is also "fish" and "robots!"

RTNext! Kids Bookseller Resources:
Edelweiss Collection | Flyer | Flyer Graphic (image)

Read is why Southen indie booksellers love these books:

Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven
This may be the most beautifully written book I've ever read. I need to process and come back, but this made me feel all the feels.
– Kelley Dykes, Main Street Reads in Summerville, South Carolina

At Night, They Danced by Victoria Scott-Miller, Toni D. Chambers (Illus.)
I absolutely LOVED when our parents went out on date nights. This book invokes all the memories of these times and highlights the love between parents. Not something you see often in kids books. Very positive and completely fun.
– Suzanne Lucey, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina

Home by Matt de la Peña, Loren Long (Illus.)
I'm weeping openly in my store after reading this gorgeous book about what makes a home. As more families are displaced due to trauma, conflict, and climate change, this is a necessary picture book to help anyone processing a difficult transition in life.
– Alissa Redmond, South Main Book Company in Salisbury, North Carolina

Candle Island by Lauren Wolk
Candle Island is one of those stories that stays in your heart. A beautiful book about love, family, and grief that shows the healing power of creativity and nurturing wildness in wild spaces. I loved it!
– Susan Williams, M. Judson, Booksellers in Greenville, South Carolina

Don't Trust Fish by Neil Sharpson, Dan Santat (Illus.)
I know a family whose surname is Fish and I have mightily amused them with the science/nature book Why Fish Don't Exist. They are going to get a kick out of this one too. I love when science fact gets presented in such a cheeky way, and the hint at the end that really this entire book may not be written by humans just compounds that mirth.
– Lisa Yee Swope, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Ripening Time by Patrice Gopo, Carlos Vélez Aguilera (Illus.)
Gopo weaves themes of family heritage, the joy of anticipation, and the small pain of waiting into a sweet story of purchasing plantains and watching them ripen before the family can fry them up for a delicious treat.
– Adah Fitzgerald, Main Street Books in Davidson, North Carolina

Current Read This Next! books and what SIBA booksellers have to say about them can always be found at The Southern Bookseller Review

We arrived late Saturday night so we were not able to attend the Ignite session held earlier that day. However, I was very pleased that the ABA actually created this session with the help of some of the BIPOC booksellers. There were also several Affinity Group sessions that were open to all who wanted to attend. I was inspired by Ocean Vuong's keynote speech which became very emotional when he talked about his journey as a young Vietnamese American writer.  

I was also impressed with the Tuesday keynote From Resistance to Resilience:  The Legacy and Future of Black Owned Bookstores. Being a Black Owned Bookstore, I was especially happy to see the interest and support that the ABA is putting in supporting our businesses. Ms. Janet Jones of Source Books in Detroit was especially inspirational given her history in Detroit as having the oldest Black-owned bookstore in the area. She is truly an inspiration to us all!

Although I enjoyed several sessions that I attended, one being the Policy and Procedures session, I was most excited to meet Kennedy Ryan at the Hachette dinner on Tuesday night and was overjoyed to learn that I would be seated next to her during our dinner. It was a complete joy and honor to meet her and get a chance to just talk.  

I thought it was a great Winter Institute. It is always so good to see old and new faces, and to spend time with fellow like-minded people. The conversations, the get-togethers, and the dinners were all so uplifting. I always feel so energized when getting back home and implementing the things I learned.

Linda-Marie Barrett / Executive Director:
Reading: Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake. I’m a fan of Blake’s sweet and sensitive queer romances and Iris Kelly is a perfect escapist read.
Listening: Enjoying classical string quartet music in the background while working and reading. Very soothing!
Watching: Continuing to drift between the Caribbean (Death in Paradise) and the Carolinas (Sweet Magnolias) for my tv viewing. Also watching spring coming into our mountains in western North Carolina, which is so exciting and comforting!

Candice Huber / Membership:
Reading: PLEASE CANDICE finish just ONE book while on vacation!
Listening: To the peaceful sounds of the ocean from my fancy cabana on the top deck of a (nerd) cruise ship. And Sarah Gailey and John Scalzi talking about writing (in person! on a cruise ship!).
Watching: The vast ocean in front of me while contemplating the depths of its mysteries.

Nicki Leone / Communications:
Reading: Still with The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing (interrupted by spates of actual gardening) and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. And my copy of the Spring edition of Slightly Foxed arrived, which is my de-stress and de-compress reading.
Listening: The audiobook of One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. It's amazing. Also agonizing.
Watching: Back to watching The Pitt. Blood. guts. gore. kindness.

SP Rankin / Website Administrator:
Reading: Mutual Interest, Olivia Wolfgang Smith's expansive, finely honed chronicle of Gilded Age capitalism. Ruthlessly brash queer heroine (anti-heroine) Vivian Lesperance Schmidt and her husband and his husband join forces to build a soap and perfume empire while trying to live on their own terms in rigid, Whartonesque New York City high society.
Listening: I'm still streaming Radio France's "FIP Pop" station which has led to some welcome new additions to my own library, including Lady Blackbird's jazz and soul inflected album Black Acid Soul.
Watching: I mean, sometimes you just want a well-crafted, well-acted TV show with varying amounts of plausibility. OK, zero plausibility. But don't let that keep you from Elsbeth, a Columbo-style howdunnit starring Carrie Preston's relentlessly quirky lawyer character from The Good Wife and a parade of guest stars enjoying themselves. And really don't let it keep you from Matlock, a semi-reboot (I won't spoil the twist) of the original starring Kathy Bates who invests surprisingly powerful emotional stakes where you really don't expect them.

Andrea Richardson / Sales:
Reading: Sarah's Pinborough's upcoming We Live Here Now. It's a spooky, haunted house twisty that I'm really enjoying.
Listening: The wind outside, telling me that it's going to be a very stormy day
Watching: I am impatiently awaiting the next episode of White Lotus. Parker Posey is true magic this season.

Linda-Marie Barrett / Executive Director:
Reading: Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall, a powerful, eye-opening read prompting much reflection. Looking forward to discussing Hood Feminism in my book club next week.
Listening: To "Classical Essentials Mixtape" from Spotify as I fly back from Winter Institute.
Watching: After busy days of meetings and catching up at Winter Institute, I've been winding down while watching Later Daters. This show brings up a lot of thoughts and empathy around the struggles of middle-aged folks entering the dating scene after a divorce or the death of a spouse. And some wonderment about whether several of them are drinking too much on their dates!

Candice Huber / Membership:
Reading: I'm on vacation so fingers crossed that when you hear from me when I get back, I will have finished at least one book instead of just starting five more.
Listening: To the sounds of jaunty music and my own laughter while walking around Disney World.
Watching: People-watching at Disney is one of my favorite things.

Nicki Leone / Communications:
Reading: The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing, Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. Also, The Golden Notebook is once again back on my desk because during our last phone call, Mom said "I'm starting The Golden Notebook. I am distracted by the awful news all the time. I need a deep dive sort of story and this might be it." I will not let Mom deep dive alone!
Listening: Now that the weather is warmer, I have my Merlin app recording everything I didn't even realize I was hearing. On a more agonizing note, I have the audiobook of One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad queued up, after listening to his amazing interview on the Between the Covers podcast.
Watching: MNSP (Movie night with SP) this past weekend was The Illusionist with Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti, which I've seen before but she hadn't. For a murder mystery it is a quiet, beautiful little jewel box of a film that makes one long for life in a sepia-toned Vienna at the turn of the last century. But while I remembered it for its beauty, I was struck fresh by the acting of Norton and especially Giamatti. There is a lot of nuanced dialogue in this movie and a fair amount of it is entirely without words.

SP Rankin / Website Administrator:
Reading: The absolutely gorgeous Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris 1900-1939, which is the companion to the National Portrait Gallery exhibition of the same name which in an amazing bit of synchronicity will be at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens during NVNR.
Écoute: FIP Pop, the pop music streaming channel on the Radio France app. This is not the French version of the Top 40, but about 60 years worth of popular music from around the world. It is completely unpredictable--the last few songs this morning have included Pulp, Serge Gainsbourg, The Smiths, and Beyoncé. No commercials, but a woman will pop in periodically and announce "FIP Pop" in the Frenchest way possible.
Watching: The Illusionist (2006). The plot (a tale of political intrigue, romance, magic, and the supernatural set in Vienna in 1900) is twisty and fun, but the standouts are the meticulous and beautiful production design (which seems mercifully free of CGI) and the pulsing Philip Glass score which evokes everything from Hitchcock to Wagner.

Andrea Richardson / Sales:
Reading: I just finished an early early bound manuscript of a great new book from Ashley Winstead, Future Saints. It's not her usual genre and I loved it!
Listening: The sounds of a snowy day in Richmond ― kids outside on the way to sled at the reservoir, and a lot of silence otherwise.
Watching: The last episode of Cobra Kai and gearing up to start the third season of White Lotus.

Batch for Books announces partnership with Simon and Schuster
Simon and Schuster has joined Batch for Books, marking a major milestone in its mission to simplify invoice and payment management for bookstores and publishers. With this addition, all of the Big Five publishers are now part of the Batch for Books network. Information for booksellers can be found here.

What to do with a box of 500 catalogs if you have a tiny store

One of the most common questions bookstores ask SIBA about the catalog program is for help with ideas on how to use them. SIBA's membership includes pop-up bookstores, mobile bookstores, online-only bookstores, prospective not-quite-open-yet bookstores, and very tiny "one man band" stores with no extra staff, just an enthusiastic owner. A box of 500 catalogs can be a lot to give out as bag stuffers, even over an entire summer.

The Indie Summer Reading Guide is not just a sales tool, it is a marketing tool for your bookstores. Assuming you can hand out 100 catalogs to customers who come into your shop, what can you do with the other 400 in the box? Here are some ideas collected from bookstores that currently participate in the SIBA catalog program:

1. Send one to everyone on your mailing list or who has ordered from you online. (50)
2. Send one as part of a store information packet to your local city council, mayor, county commissioners, or other business community influencers with a letter about the importance of their support for local businesses. (25)
3. Do an exchange with another business near you -- they pass out your catalogs to their customers, you pass out their "free coffee" coupons to yours. (50)
4. If your store does pop-ups, offsite events, or bookmobile routes, seed places on your summer route with catalogs and info to purchase books online from the digital version, or order and pick up when you are in the area. (100)
5. Hand out catalogs to attendees of store events, story times, book club meetings, etc. (100)
6. Bring catalogs to local independent and/or assisted living communities and take orders. (50)
7. Include a catalog in all special order book shipment and/or subscription boxes. (25)

50+25+50+100+100+50+25=400! Success!

Reserve your FREE Indie Summer Reading Guides

The 2025 Love Y'all Romance Book Fest was held in Decatur, Georgia on February 14-16. With over 80 authors and keynote addresses by Sonora Reyes, Julian Winters, Amalie Howard, and Ali Hazelwood, Love Y'all is one of the largest romance-dedicated book festivals in the country. Now in its second year, it is also a festival founded and run by a team of indie booksellers from the Atlanta area. Festival founder Preet Singh of Eagle Eye Books talks about why they decided they needed a Romance book festival:

"I spent two decades traveling the country to meet authors and readers who wrote, read, and loved romance." says Singh, whose bio says she discovered romances when she was 10 and her love for the genre is still going strong. In January 2023, Georgia indie booksellers held a meeting at Read it Again where they all agreed there was a lack of genre fiction events, especially romance, and they decided to do something about it.

"While our primary focus is always to create a safe space for EVERYONE to celebrate romance," notes Singh, "we also wanted to ensure our local community was supported too, with four indie booksellers handling all book sales. We're a diverse group of organizers-PoC, Immigrants, Queer, Allies, Neurospicy, and more. Highlights from 2025 include our opening and closing keynotes, Truth or Dare on Sunday morning, and hearing from authors and attendees they had a wonderful time. It felt like a moment out of time, while the administration makes moves to erase us."

Singh acknowledges that balancing roles of organizer and bookseller is challenging. It means longer hours, both mentally and physically, and is a labor of love. "I am very lucky to have an amazing group of people to organize Love Y'all with," she said. "Vania from Brave + Kind, Hannah (former B+K & Bookish Atlanta bookseller, now a literary agent), and Jo (formerly employed in publishing) and another wonderful group at Eagle Eye who support me and the festival. I have seen the romance community blossom in Atlanta, and it brings me so much joy to see it flourish. Love Y'all will return in 2026."

The winners of the 2025 Southern Book Prize were announced on February 14: Rednecks by Taylor Brown (St. Martin’s Press) in Fiction, The Mango Tree by Annabelle Tometich (Little, Brown and Company) in Nonfiction, and Not Like Other Girls by Meredith Adamo (Bloomsbury YA) in Young Readers. Winning authors receive a donation in their name to the charity or nonprofit of their choice.

Read the full press release

SIBA has created a marketing toolkit including a poster, a flyer, and social media graphics, for booksellers to use in their stores.

As part of its support for the Southern Book Prize, SIBA awards two raffle winners.

Collin Bridges won a $100 gift card to their local bookstore in the Southern Books Prize Social Media Scavenger Hunt. Their bookstore is The Lynx in Gainesville, Florida.

Brooks Jewell is the raffle winner for participating in the Southern Book Prize ballot. They receive a collection of Southern Book Prize finalists. Their SIBA store is The Snail on the Wall in Huntsville, Alabama. "I have always been an avid reader," said Jewell, "there is nothing like a book to bring both joy and solace! Congratulations to this year’s Southern Book Prize winners! I’m so excited to add them to my collection!"