Orders for the Summer Catalog are at the press and expected to land at stores in a few weeks. Time stops for no one, however, so yes, it is now time to order your Holiday Catalogs!

Don't miss out on this major SIBA benefit and key tool in making your 4th quarter a success. SIBA booksellers receive up to 14 boxes (7000 catalogs) for free, direct and saturation mail to your customers and potential customers, as well as newspaper insertions are available.

The deadline for saturation mail orders is June 1, and for all other orders is June 15th. But don't wait, Catalog Ordering is open now!

RAMP has designed a streamlined ordering page to make the process easy-peasy. If you have ordered any RAMP products since 2020, your store account is already active. If not, creating an account takes just a few minutes.

Stores who ordered catalogs in the past three years: Click here
Stores who need to create an account: Click here

Visit RAMP for more detailed information, to download the marketing kit.

Big changes come from small steps and mistakes

In a recent interview with Workshop, Amrita Aggarwal of Bakau Consulting outlines some of the steps small businesses can take, and the pitfalls they face, in transforming their companies into ethical, anti-racist organizations. Pointing out that businesses which don't actively cultivate diversity risk failure because they do not reflect the communities they serve, and that will be noticed.

"It is a collective responsibility for us to give back and make sure we do better for the communities we’re serving." -Amrita Aggarwal

Aggarwal offers a number of ways small businesses can integrate anti-racist practices into their regular operations--from re-evaluating the company's mission and purpose, to changing some of the company messaging on social media, or making a donation to indigenous communities whose land they are on.

But most importantly, she encourages business owners not to stop with the creation of a diversity statement, but to follow through with real, substantive action. She also advises not to let the fear of making a mistake hamper real action. We learn from mistakes, they are signs that we are committed to change:

"The thing is, you are going to make mistakes. And that is okay. What is more important is the accountability that you take after you’ve made that mistake. Maybe, now that you evaluate your business, you find that this thing you did might have been racist. The first step is awareness and an acknowledgment that something has happened. Then you go and be accountable: what are some reparations that you can make for the harm that has been caused?" -Amrita Aggarwal

At the end of the interview Aggarwal offers an exceptionally thorough resource kit used by Bakau Consulting for helping businesses to strategize their diversity and inclusion goals which not only includes a collection of links and resources they find useful, but also specific strategies on topics such as "Inclusive Language," "Interrupting Unconscious Bias," and "LGBTQIA2S Inclusion."

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 27, 2023

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance opposes efforts to ban books and censor events at independent bookstores.

(Asheville, NC) During the last year, SIBA bookstores have reported widespread efforts to ban books. They have witnessed this in their community libraries and schools and have experienced extraordinary pressure, including protests, to limit choices in their inventory, especially when books reflect the stories of those who are LGBTQ+ and/or people of color. Bookstores hosting drag storytime events have been threatened with physical violence and faced armed protests and vandalism. Authors who identify as non-binary and/or transgender have expressed concern for personal safety when visiting stores in states now contemplating or passing anti-trans legislation. Black authors have had school visits canceled and their books removed from school and public library shelves because of the perception of Critical Race Theory within the content.

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance strongly condemns these acts of censorship and intimidation, and supports the ALA’s Freedom to Read Statement, written in 1953 and still true today. We cite this passage:

“We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture. We believe that these pressures toward conformity present the danger of limiting the range and variety of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our culture depend. We believe that every American community must jealously guard the freedom to publish and to circulate, in order to preserve its own freedom to read. . .The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution.”

Independent bookstores, because they are privately owned and able to curate their inventory, are uniquely positioned to safeguard the freedom to read for readers of all ages. We stand with stores carrying books under community threat of censorship and hosting events that spark protest by those who would ban book content or authors.

The mission of independent bookstores to serve their community of readers and defend free speech and access to literature and discussion of controversial ideas has never been more important during this wave of banning, intimidation, and regressive legislation. As one SIBA children’s store owner stated,  "We may become the only places left where kids see themselves in the books they read."

Linda-Marie Barrett, Executive Director
Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance
51 Pleasant Ridge Drive, Asheville, NC 28805
803.994.9530
www.sibaweb.com

Five new books have been selected by SIBA booksellers for April's Read This Next! List!

Read This Next! highlights new books that are receiving exceptional, and exceptionally enthusiastic, buzz from Southern indie booksellers. SIBA always makes a point of putting the store excitement and buzz around these books in front of their publishers, raising store visibility with the industry.

Read This Next Bookseller Resources:
Edelweiss Collection | Flyer | Flyer Front (image)

What SIBA Booksellers have to say:

Above Ground by Clint Smith
Above Ground is a poetry collection that is a heartfelt ode to fatherhood. These poems are imbued with the love, joy, wonder, and uncertainties that accompany being a parent.
– Damita Nocton from The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, NC

Once There Was by Kiyash Monsef
A story that will appeal to both middle-grade and young adult readers who love myths, about discovering the missing parts of yourself -- whether you know they're missing or not, and whether or not you want them.
–Melissa Oates from Fiction Addiction in Greenville, SC

Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez
Is there such a thing as a meet-ugly? Out of an utterly disastrous first "meeting" (they didn't actually even meet, just started jumping to wrong conclusions) grew a ten-tissue romance for the ages.
–Lisa Yee Swope from Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, NC

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith has the ability to take the human feelings and emotions we all have, but sometimes lack the words to describe, and present them through a beautiful metaphor that can make you feel seen and understood.
–Abby from The Snail on the Wall in Huntsville, AL

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune
This novel holds all the beautiful, tender sentimentality, found family dynamics, loving humor, and self-discovery that I've come to expect from TJ Klune.
–Elizabeth DeWandeler from A Novel Escape in Franklin, NC

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

About Woke

Almost a year ago, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 7 into law. The law regulates how race issues can be taught in the state's educational system, but HB 7 is better known as the Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act, or the Stop WOKE Act.

Words gain and lose nuance and meaning in daily discourse as a matter of course, but how is it that "woke" -- shorthand for "being aware of inequality and racism" has now found its way onto a piece of legislation written specifically to suppress the awareness of inequality and racism?

The word has been co-opted by right-wing activists as a term of contempt liberally applied (pun intended) to, well, almost anything they don't like.."everything from deadly mass shootings to lower military recruitment." (David Remnick, The Political Scene Podcast) And while this can sometimes border on the ridiculous, like the great band-aid controversy, it has also been blamed for the banking crisis. In other words, "Woke" in a right-wing context, is an expression of anger and fear.

But the word at its heart retains its meaning of being socially aware, being empathetic, being informed. The origins of "Woke" in its political sense are uncertain, but probably are found in the early twentieth century in the labor movement and early Black activism. The linguist Tony Thorne (Dictionary of Contemporary Slang) notes that "woke" (as opposed to "awake") is a Southern US dialect. There are sporadic uses of "woke" in news articles and blues songs in the 50s and 60s, and it was understood well enough as a concept that in 1965 Martin Luther King gave a commencement address to Oberlin College called "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution."

"Woke" was well established shorthand, especially in the Black community, by the time Erykah Badu released "Master Teacher" on her album New Amerykah -- often bookmarked as the moment the word entered popular culture. But Badu's "woke" is something more immediate than the general liberal definition of "socially aware.":

“Woke is definitely a black experience — woke is if someone put a burlap sack on your head, knocked you out, and put you in a new location and then you come to and understand where you are ain’t home and the people around you ain’t your neighbors. They’re not acting in a neighborly fashion, they’re the ones who conked you on your head. You got kidnapped here and then you got punked out of your own language, everything. That’s woke — understanding what your ancestors went through. Just being in touch with the struggle that our people have gone through here and understanding we’ve been fighting since the very day we touched down here. There was no year where the fight wasn’t going down.” --Georgia Anne Muldrow

For Black people to be woke is to be aware that you live in a place hostile to your existence.

In the wake of GeorgeF loyd's murder and Black Lives Matter movement, "woke" became the mainstream rallying cry for change, and in the process the word became appropriated and diluted, an inevitability since white people never dace the same consequences and risks as Black people. "Socially Aware of Racial Injustice" means something entirely different for them and is a pallid substitute for a word that was meant to describe living under the constant threat of violence for being Black.

Inevitably, when words become co-opted people start to question whether or not they should even be used. "Slang amongst Black people is a love language," says Khiara M. Bridges, professor of law at UC Berkley School of Law, "and I am frustrated when that slang becomes appropriated and used by others and the meaning morphs. There’s something really sinister about this term not only being taken from us but also deployed against us. It’s a double violation.”

But at the same time, there is a power in reclaiming language from those who have appropriated it and weaponized it. Booksellers, who believe in the power of language to change the world for the better, know this better than anyone. Kathleen Newman-Bremang, in her essay "When Did “Woke” Lose Its Meaning & How Do We Get It Back?" has a suggests the best way to reclaim woke is to make people say what they mean when they use it:

"...succumbing to pressure to relinquish a word that was once so powerful to us over to people who only want to use it to harm us feels wrong. It’s heartbreaking, and I don’t want to do it. But we can’t deny that its meaning has shifted, and naming exactly what people mean when they say it now is important for holding up a mirror to their white supremacist intentions. Next time someone uses “woke” in a derogatory manner, or calls a book or TV show “woke,” ask them what they really mean by that term. Make them say the quiet part out loud. Because it might be harder to say “I hate Black people” than “that’s too woke.”

Confronting Book Banning

Southern communities are facing an unprecedented, and frankly frightening, upswell in book challenges and book banning initiatives. No longer the result of individual complaints, book banning has become a politicized tool increasingly showing up in local and state legislation, where not only individual books, but entire topics (usually lumped under the heading of "gender studies" or "critical race theory" ) are being removed from school curricula and standardized testing.

As booksellers, it is easy to know how to feel in the face of these challenges, but it is more difficult, as small business owners, to know how to respond.

SIBA encourages booksellers to revisit the recording of the 2021 NVNR Banned Books Panel, featuring a conversation between Amy Sarig King (The War of the Black Rectangles), Sam Droke-Dickerson of Aaron's Books, and David Grogan from the American Booksellers for Free Expression (ABFE) .

The event also had a lively audience participation in the chat, where booksellers shared resources they found helpful when dealing with local book challenges. You can find links to those in in the SIBA blog.

Note, especially, the Banned Books Action Items sheet from Sam Droke-Dickerson, which provides a number of concrete steps stores can take to respond to book challenges in their own communities.

New Voices New Rooms, a joint program between NAIBA and SIBA, is happy to present the annual Publicity Speed Dating

Cost is $35 per slot. Because space is very limited, we are asking stores to only sign up for one spot. You may also sign up for an additional children's spot on Friday, however priority will be given to Children's-only bookstores and you may be waitlisted.

There will be a morning (9:30am-12:30pm) and afternoon (1:30pm-4:30pm) time block for speed dating each day. Thursday afternoon will be devoted to children's books. Bookstores will have one 15-minute appointment time to introduce themselves & the features of their store’s event programs to a zoom room of multiple publicists. Booksellers will select their date and time block and NVNR will assign the specific presentation time within it.

The available slots (48) for this program are being divided among the two regions; 24 for NAIBA and 24 for SIBA. Six bookstores from each region can opt for the children’s slot on Friday afternoon. Children’s only bookstores will get priority in that assignment.

Booksellers: You will sign up for a date/time slot upon registration. NVNR will assign the specific time for your presentation. You will need to provide a press kit, which will be shared with all the publishers. NVNR staff will also share your press kit live on-screen during your speed dating appointment.

Register here. (NAIBA stores can register as "guest")

Resources for presenting stores:

Watch Maribeth Pelly's press kit webinar to guide you while you create or update your marketing materials.

Watch "Making the Most of Your Pitch" with Bren McClain for useful tips on giving great, engaging presentations.

If your store attended NVNR’s 2022 Fall Conference and added your press kit to the Bookstore Row Directory, NVNR can use that as your press kit for this event.

March is Indie Press Month, and SIBA is so excited to celebrate our favorite small presses! The Independent Publisher’s Caucus has some excellent resources for indie presses, so we thought we’d share with you in the spirit of the month!

The Bookseller Landing Page lists all the initiatives IPC has for booksellers, including:

• Indie-to-Indie Conversations, where indie booksellers, presses, reps, and more discuss how indie presses and indie bookstores can better support and uplift each other.
• Galley Offer Page, where IPC member presses post both digital and physical ARC opportunities.
• Monthly Indie Playlists, which are booklists of great books from indie presses releasing during the month! March’s focus is Women’s History Month.

IPC also works closely with Books Across Borders, which is primarily funded by indie presses and provides fellowships to international book fairs and overseas bookstore residencies for booksellers.

Anna Thorn, IPC’s Director, also mentioned a few exciting upcoming projects! This June, stores can join the Indie Playlist Display Contest, which includes co-op and prize money. The theme is queer pride! You can get more info on the contest here and sign up here. 

This Spring, IPC is launching a Backlist Essentials Database, which lists the Top Ten Titles for each IPC member, which will help buyers with decisions. It will also allow buyers to filter by a variety of themes to help with diversity efforts, regional titles, genre, etc. IPC is also launching a New Bookstore Package, which will be an opt-in introduction to the indie press ecosystem for new stores (or new booksellers). The highlight is that you get ten free finished copies from the presses you're most excited about! Finally, IPC will make it easier to identify indie press galleys by creating a logo for their members to put onto galleys.

We hope you take advantage of some of these fantastic offerings and that you celebrate small presses this month! 

A Conversation with James White & Krista White, authors of Anti-Racist Leadership: How to Transform Corporate Culture in a Race-Conscious World

What does Anti-Racist leadership look like in practice?

Businesses seeking to foster an anti-racist culture within their companies face rethinking policies that have been in place, unquestioned and unexamined, often for years if not since the beginning of the organization. But what does this look like in practice?

James White and Krista White, President and CEO respectively of Jamba Juice and authors of Anti-Racist Leadership: How to Transform Corporate Culture in a Race-Conscious World, were recently interviewed by Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP) about the leadership qualities needed to effect real corporate change within an organization.

The first priority? Creating space for all backgrounds and voices:

"Anti-racist leadership is also about expanding the conversation beyond Black and white. Not only must it include other races, religions, and ethnic groups, demonstrably important by the recent prevalence of anti-Asian attacks and anti-Semitism, but it must also include every aspect of identity. Queer rights, trans rights, disability rights, and women’s rights, just to name a few, are included in how anti-racism is defined. To proclaim that Black Lives Matter or to Stop Asian Hate, we must first acknowledge and honor all intersections of these identities." --Krista White.

The authors share examples of successfull anti-racist leadership within a business setting, noting that what all the examples had in common were that policies changes were tied to the achievement of measurable goals. New policies were monitored and tracked to ensure they were doing what they were intended to do.

They also emphasize that collaboration -- using teams to assess problems and find solutions, is a more effective tool than a policy that is implemented from the top down. Collaboration is the difference between a new policy that is imposed, and one that is embraced.

"Our three most critical takeaways for CEOs are first – this work is about improving culture; the CEO should never delegate this leadership. Second – a rigorous examination of all people-related systems and processes is critical. Finally – the action and lever for sustainable change involves focusing on the middle management of the company." -- James White

Read more

March Madness Recap: Louisiana Booksellers congregate at Baldwin & Co.
by Candice Huber, owner, Tubby & Coo's Mid-City Bookshop

The first March Madness event, held March 1st at Baldwin & Co. in New Orleans, was attended by booksellers from Louisiana, including Frenchmen Art & Books, Cavalier House Books, Blue Cypress Books, The Conundrum, Garden District Bookshop, Community Book Center, The Historic New Orleans Collection, and Tubby & Coo's.

As the event host, DJ Johnson from Baldwin & Co. opened the event with a tour of the store's multi-faceted business model, including the store cafe, podcast studio, ART Bar/event space, and short term rental space. (The bookstore -- located in a building which used to be a a funeral home --may be haunted.) Baldwin & Co's business model supports its nonprofit arm, the Baldwin & Co Foundation, which hosts events and book festivals in support of NOLA's Black community and writers.

The tour was followed by a presentation from Sarah High of Bookshop.org, who discussed how the platform can be used by booksellers to support virtual book festivals and school book fairs, customer registries and wishlists, and direct to home ordering and preorder campaigns. Bookshop also plans to make ebooks part of their indie bookstore platform by the end of 2023.

The lunchtime speaker, author Terah Shelton Harris, who is also a librarian, held a spirited discussion with booksellers on building working partnerships between bookstores and libraries. The subject was of special interest to NOLA stores because of local laws that prevent bookstores from acting as booksellers for library events.

"Overall, we had a great day of networking and learning at Baldwin & Co.!" -- Candice Huber