From the Land of SIBAA message from SIBA to its membership
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First Things First...
1/7: Registration opens for Winter Institute (more info) 1/7: Reader Meet Writer - The Wife Upstairs with Rachel Hawkins
1/12: Reader Meet Writer - The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus with Allan Gurganus 1/14: Reader Meet Writer - Wilmington's Lie with David Zucchino 1/25 - 1/29: New Voices New Rooms Winter Retreat
2/1: Southern Book Prize Ballot Deadline (here) 2/9: Reader Meet Writer - Code Name Hélène with Ariel Lawhon 2/11: Reader Meet Writer - Race Against Time with Jerry
Mitchell 2/18 - 2/20: ABA Winter Institute
3/4: Reader Meet Writer - Love at First with Kate Clayborn
A Letter from Out Going SIBA Board President Kelly Justice
January 7, 2021 11:15 AM
Dear Fellow SIBA Booksellers and Our Industry Supporters,
I want to extend my deepest thanks for the honor of serving as your president in this past year that has been so difficult for most everyone. I don’t need to go into the nightmarish details of 2020 that continue to follow us
into 2021 (as the events of yesterday and continued awful news of the last few weeks clearly show), but I would like to share a few reflections.
Despite the inability to gather together in person at the SIBA conference, at BookExpo, or any other meetings since all this stuff started, I feel much closer to many of you and to our industry colleagues and bunches of authors. That
is something I hope continues when things return to a less isolated future. Let’s try to keep our hearts open and keep working on the hard lessons we’ve had to face about our country and ourselves going forward.
I’ve had incredibly deep conversations with friends I’ve had for years, even decades, but never truly knew anything about their day-to-day lives. I’m glad I know those things now.
Most of us had to learn a lot of new technology this year. I love that stuff! Now I have to admit I often used it as an excuse to avoid painful emotional or financial decisions that needed to be made as, you know…I was “working”!
Many of you don’t love technology and had to learn it anyway.
I still count the moment when I despaired of not having pictures of our fantastic online author events being solved with the discovery of this thing called the “screen shot” as a highlight of my year.
Then I realized all the events were recorded and I could just snap a frame out of the video and felt kind of stupid.
This revelation came months later, of course.
I learned that there was no right way to do this thing.
I made the choice to try to keep all my staff in their jobs with closed doors. We are still not open for in-store shopping. We just found different ways to do things. Others of you made your own choices with little or no information
or different information every day. If your choices were different from mine, as long as you were doing everything you believed would keep everyone as safe as possible using science-based facts, I respect the integrity of those
choices. Please do a kindness to your fellow booksellers and respect their responsible decisions. There was and is no “right way” to do this.
I would like to thank my fellow board members Janet, Jamie, Deanna, John, (and Shane from earlier in the year) for their contributions and their friendship. I would like to thank Linda-Marie and the SIBA staff for making the conference
happen and for executing the board decisions and daily operations to turn SIBA into the organization members needed this year. I am in awe of their work. And I hope Wanda’s not reading this stuff anymore, but I thank her
for building such a stable foundation for all of us.
Would you like to be more involved with SIBA? Get the inside scoop on new and existing programming? Have an opportunity to provide feedback in an environment where your voice matters? Become a SIBA influencer!
What’s involved? SIBA staff meet with the influencers bi-weekly (no meetings in Sept, Nov, Dec, unless requested) to get feedback on programming and new initiatives. Meetings last one hour and occur on Tuesdays at 10AM EST. Influencers
must be current bookseller members of SIBA, and only one influencer per store. We are especially interested in expanding BIPOC bookseller representation.
Please rsvp to Linda-Marie by 2/1 if you’d like to be an influencer in 2021, or need more info.
The Southern Bookseller Review: FAQs
The response to SIBA's guided Zoom tour of The Southern Bookseller Review on Wednesday was very enthusiastic. 77 booksellers and publishers attended the event. Here are some of the questions that came up:
Is The Southern Bookseller Review a site for booksellers, or for everyone?
SBR is a consumer-facing website, for readers and the people who (hopefully) shop at indie bookstores. The site promotes the reviews booksellers post on their own sites, in the newsletters, in their staff picks sections, and to Edelweiss,
and makes them easily shareable to a wider audience.
Are only new books reviewed on SBR?
No. For the launch SIBA focused on publishing reviews of fall and winter titles, since those would likely be in stock at stores. But going forward, the most important criteria for choosing what to publish is that a bookseller really
liked the book. Backlist titles will be included.
How will publishers know that reviews of books have been published?
SBR has a strong social media strategy in place, and shares reviews on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The reviewing store, the author, and the publisher are all tagged when the review is shared.
What tags should stores use when they share SBR reviews?
The official tags are #SouthernBooksellerReview and #TheSouthernBooksellerReview
How can a publisher or author get their book reviewed on SBR?
SBR only publishes reviews by SIBA booksellers. The best thing to do is to ask booksellers to read and post a review of your book. Making digital and print review copies available to booksellers is a key step. Review copies can be
offered through Edelweiss, or via SIBA's "Galleys & Giveaways" and "eBlast" promotions.
Do book reviews have to be posted on Edelweiss to appear in SBR?
No. SIBA recognizes that not every book can be found in Edelweiss's platform. Booksellers who have a book not listed there, or who don't use Edelweiss, can submit reviews via the SBR Review Submission Form.
What is "Read This Next!"? Are you still publishing the Okra Picks?
Okra Picks have been re-branded as Read This Next!, a selection of 12-15 books each season. They are no longer required to be Southern, but they must show exceptional and enthusiastic early buzz from SIBA booksellers. Books are no
longer nominated, but selected based on the reviews booksellers have posted.
Do you only publish reviews after the books have been released?
No, SBR will publish reviews of books that aren't out yet, in the interest of encouraging pre-orders for titles that are generating a lot of early buzz among booksellers.
How are bookstores added to the store directory? Can I update my store's information there?
The bookstores listed in the directory come from SIBA's own member list of southern bookstores. If you see something inaccurate about your listing, you can email SIBA to have it corrected. The most important thing stores can do is
to check their own account with SIBA to make sure the information we have for you is accurate.
How often are new reviews published?
Daily! Booksellers are the most avid of avid readers, so SIBA plans on publishing 10-25 book reviews each week.
Reader Meet Writer: January
Are you interested in joining the circle of bookstores
sending invites to their customers? Please email Linda-Marie and we'll discuss what's involved.
The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus with Allan Gurganus Tue Jan 12th 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Allan Gurganus is widely translated, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Adaptations of his fiction have earned four Emmys, and his stories have been appearing in The New Yorker since
1974. He lives in a small town in North Carolina.
Wilmington's Lie with David Zucchino Thu Jan 14th 7:00pm - 8:00pm
David Zucchino is a contributing writer for The New York Times. He has covered wars and civil conflicts in more than three dozen countries. Zucchino was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his dispatches from
apartheid South Africa and is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for his reporting from Iraq, Lebanon, Africa, and inner-city Philadelphia. He is the author of Thunder Run and Myth of the Welfare Queen.
This week on Circle of Sites
Read more about SIBA's Circle of Sites Program (aka the "banner for dues" program) and find out whether your store is eligible to participate and
receive free membership dues.
Read This! Recently Posted on The Southern Bookseller Review
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth, Sara Lautman (Illus.) (List Price: $27.99, William Morrow, 9780062942852, 10/20/2020) Reviewed by Jenny Luper, Page 158 Books in
Wake Forest, NC
It is 1909 in Spokane, WA, and orphaned brothers Gig and Rye Dolan are barely surviving day to day…taking odd jobs where they can find them and hopping trains to get from place to place. When older brother Gig gets involved in
the IWW union and gets himself in trouble, 16-year-old Rye picks up where he left off and finds himself deeply entangled in the dirty business of brutal police, deal-making, and shady businessmen. You really do become invested
in the characters as you’re drawn deeper into their stories of desperation, hard times, and brotherhood. If you liked Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach or Paulette Jiles’s News of the World,
this book is for you!
The Cold Millions by Jess Walter (List Price: $28.99, Harper, 9780062868084, 10/27/2020) Reviewed by Mary Patterson, The Little Bookshop in
Midlothian, Virginia
I have been waiting for this book since it was announced and I have to say–it is even better than I was hoping it would be. This follow up to The Hate U Give tells the story of Maverick Carter in his teenage years. Starting
when he finds out he’s a father and going until just before Starr’s birth, Thomas takes us back to the Garden and once again shows us how to walk in someone else’s shoes. Mav is trying to be the best man and
father he can be. He finds a “straight” job at a local store to get away from the world of drug sales and gangs but the money isn’t enough to support him and his growing family. Will he be able to get out
from under the thumb of King, his friend turned leader of the King Lords and provide for his family? You won’t be able to put this down until you see how it ends and even then you will wish for more stories from this
universe.
Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas (List Price: $19.99, Balzer +Bray, 9780062846716, 1/12/2021) Reviewed by Andrea Richardson, Fountain Bookstore in
Richmond, Virginia
1. Anxious People Fredrik Backman, Atria, $28, 9781501160837 2. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue V.E. Schwab, Tor, $26.99, 9780765387561 3. The Vanishing Half Brit Bennett, Riverhead Books, $27, 9780525536291 4. Ready Player Two Ernest Cline, Ballantine, $28.99, 9781524761332 5. The Midnight Library Matt Haig, Viking,
$26, 9780525559474
HARDCOVER NONFICTION
1. A Promised Land Barack Obama, Crown, $45, 9781524763169 2. Wintering Katherine May, Riverhead Books, $24, 9780593189481 3. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Charlie Mackesy, HarperOne, $22.99, 9780062976581 4. Modern Comfort Food Ina Garten, Clarkson Potter, $35, 9780804187060 5. Caste Isabel Wilkerson, Random House,
$32, 9780593230251
Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Supporting independent bookstores in the South SIBA | 51 Pleasant Ridge Drive | Asheville, NC 28805
Thank you for your interest in SIBA, Nicki Leone SysAdmin
nicki@sibaweb.com
THANKS TO OUR INKREADIBLE SPONSORS:
SIBA | 51 Pleasant Ridge Drive | Asheville, NC 28805 You have received this email because you are currently subscribed to receive general correspondence. Please click @@unsubscribe_url@@ if you
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Are you interested in joining the circle of bookstores
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The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus with Allan Gurganus
Wilmington's Lie with David Zucchino
