From the Land of SIBAA message from SIBA to its membership
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First Things First...
5/31: Nomination deadline for SIBA Board (
here) 5/31: Deadline to submit ABACUS Survey (more info) 6/1: MPBA 3-Part Diversity Equity and Inclusion
Workshop co-sponsored by SIBA (register) 6/3: Reader Meet Writer: If or When I Call with Will Johnson (more info)
6/7: Reader Meet Writer: The Soulmate Equation with Christina Lauren (more info) 6/10: Reader Meet Writer: We Are Each Other's Harvest with Natalie
Baszile (more info) 6/17: Reader Meet Writer: The Killing Hills with Chris Offutt(more info) 6/17:
Coffee with the Board (register) 6/24: Reader Meet Writer: My Mistress' Eyes Are Raven Black with Terry Roberts (more info)
The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA)
and the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) are coming together again for their fall virtual conference, New Voices, New Rooms (NVNR) September 27-October 1. NVNR will offer our beloved community of booksellers,
publishers, authors, and other industry partners a week of opportunities for education, networking, innovation, and fun. Our official theme for NVNR 2021 is “Opening Doors.”
Also New to NVNR 2021: The VIndies! NVNR and their “academy” of judges drawn from the greats of our bookselling community will award prizes to videos created in 2020 by independent bookstores in the SIBA
& NAIBA territories. The award ceremony, which will include viewings of the finalist videos, will take place during the conference. Look for a separate call for submissions for the VIndies in the coming weeks.
The recent launch of the RAMP Summer email program [you can still sign up]
has highlighted for bookstores the ongoing importance of email in their day to day business.
The first step to creating a good email marketing program is to start with a good subscriber list. So here are three basic email list maintenance tasks you should do if you have an email newsletter
or are using a program like RAMP:
Actively, and organically grow your subscriber list. Don't purchase or rent lists from third party services. Instead, run periodic subscription campaigns in your store and on your social media channels.
Clean up your list. Remove duplicate addresses, fix or remove addresses with typos, update or remove invalid addresses, and remove any bouncing addresses. Sending emails that have a high "bounce rate"
can have a negative impact on your sender reputation.
Have a "sunset policy" for unengaged contacts. Periodically send out emails to the addresses that haven't opened your messages in the last 6-12 months, inviting them to confirm their subscription.
You can try incentivizing them to re-engage, or remove them if they don't.
Doing these three things regularly will result in a high-quality engaged subscriber list, which in turn will mean more responses and more sales from the newsletters you do send out, either yourself or via a program like RAMP or IndieNext.
The Blues : The Authentic Narrative of My Music and Culture by Chris Thomas King
On Sale Date: June 8, 2021 9781641604444, 1641604441 Hardcover
$30.00 USD, $40.00 CAD
Music / Genres & Styles / Blues Biography & Autobiography / Cultural, Ethnic & Regional / African American & Black Music / Ethnomusicology
All prior histories on the blues have alleged it originated on plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Not true, says author Chris Thomas King. In The Blues, King present facts to disprove such myths. For example, that as early
as 1900, the sound of the blues was ubiquitous in New Orleans. The Mississippi Delta, meanwhile, was an unpopulated sportsman's paradise—the frontier was still in the process of being cleared and drained for cultivation. Moreover,
this book is the first to argue the blues began as a cosmopolitan art form, not a rural one. Protestant states such as Mississippi and Alabama could not have incubated the blues. New Orleans was the only place in the Deep South
where the sacred and profane could party together without fear of persecution. Expecting these findings to be controversial in some circles, King has buttressed his conclusions with primary sources and years of extensive research,
including a sojourn to West Africa and interviews with surviving folklorists and blues researchers from the 1960s folk-rediscovery epoch. They say the blues is blasphemous; the devil's music—King says they're unenlightened. Blues
music is about personal freedom.
ADVANCING EQUITY, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION WORKSHOP SERIES
SIBA is joining and supporting MPIBA’s series on Advancing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, working with Prismatic - Varied & Brilliant. It will get you started or keep you going with:
Your awareness about where you and your organization are with regard to equity, diversity and inclusion.
Ways to challenge the status quo, mitigate the impact of bias and improve customer engagement.
Learning about culturally responsive and humanizing customer engagement.
Dates and Times: SESSION 1: Tuesday, June 1, 3:00 – 4:30 MDT (5pm ET) SESSION 2: Tuesday, June 8, 3:00 – 4:30 MDT (5pm ET) SESSION 3: Tuesday, June 22, 3:00 – 4:30 MDT (5pm ET)
Winter Institute Scholarship Applications Open Winter Institute is scheduled for February 13-16 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Applications to receive a scholarship including waived event fees, a comped hotel room, and
up to $500 reimbursement for travel to and from the institute are now open. The deadline to apply is June 25. More info
Jill McCorkle will Zoom with your book club Algonquin Books has created a book club kit for the paperback release of Jill McCorkle's Hieroglyphics.
McCorkle has also offered to meet virtually with book clubs of eight people or more for thirty minutes to talk with them about the novel. Bookstores are invited to pass along the information to their customers. Contact michael@algonquin.com to set up a visit.
Reader Meet Writer: Coming Up
In case you missed them: recent Reader Meet Writer episodes now online:
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.
Coming up next on Reader Meet Writer:
If or When I Call with Will Johnson Thu Jun 3rd 7:00pm - 8:00pm | REGISTER
Will Johnson is a musician and songwriter who has played in the bands Centro-matic, South San Gabriel, Marie/Lepanto, Overseas, New Multitudes, and Monsters of Folk. He also releases records under his own name,
and makes paintings centering on the subject of baseball and its history. His work has appeared in American Short Fiction. He was born in Kennett, Missouri, and currently lives in Austin, Texas. If or When I Call is
his first novel.
The Soulmate Equation with Christina Lauren Tue Jun 8th 7:00pm - 8:00pm | REGISTER
Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of longtime writing partners and best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA TODAY, and #1 internationally bestselling authors
of the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, Dating You / Hating You, Autoboyography, Love and Other Words, Roomies, Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, My Favorite Half-Night Stand, and The Unhoneymooners. You can find
them online at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com,@ChristinaLauren on Instagram, or @ChristinaLauren on Twitter.
We Are Each Other's Harvest with Natalie Baszile Thu Jun 10th 7:00pm - 8:00pm | REGISTER
Natalie Baszile is the author of the novel Queen Sugar, which was a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2014, longlisted for the Crooks Corner Southern Book Prize, nominated for an NAACP Image
Award, and adapted for television by writer/director Ava DuVernay and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey for OWN. Baszile holds a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA and is a graduate of Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program
for Writers. She lives in San Francisco.
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.
What booksellers are saying about Unsettled Ground
Claire Fuller has gifted her readers with a beautifully wrought tale of how grief can lead to an insular life of loneliness and control. Hidden secrets and lifelong misconceptions rise to the surface in this tender and compelling
read. -- Damita Nocton, The Country Bookshop, Southern Pines, NC Buy from The Country Bookshop
Beautifully immersive, Claire Fuller’s Unsettled Ground explores the consequences of decisions and secrets adults make when their children have no agency. This is a captivating, suspenseful book that will end with you
deeply wanting to have a conversation with the characters. -- Rachel Watkins from Avid Bookshop in Athens, GA Buy from Avid Bookshop.
Fuller has developed two wonderful characters, flawed and naive but resilient. I worried about them but thoroughly enjoyed watching them solve the challenges they met. This is a great story and well worth the read. -Stephanie Crowe
from Page & Palette in Fairhope, AL Buy from Page & Palette
Unsettled Ground is truly the perfect title for this book, because no matter how comfy I was in my favorite chair on a cozy night, I never felt truly settled reading this book. And sometimes, that is the reading experience
you need. -- Kate Storhoff from Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, NC Buy from Bookmarks
Bolu Babalola’s prose had me enraptured from the very first page! The artful way that she rewove and spun myths from around the world was absolutely masterful, and I enjoyed reading fresh takes on stories that I knew, while
also having the opportunity to encounter stories that I wasn’t familiar with at all. LOVE IN COLOR is for anyone who is constantly in awe of the power of love, and also for anyone who may need to be reminded of it.
Love in Color by Bolu Babalola (List Price: $25.99, William Morrow, 9780063078499, 4/13/2021) Reviewed by Lucy Perkins-Wagel, Copperfish Books in Punta Gorda,
Florida
Linda-Marie: Reading: The List by Patricia Forde. Just started this dystopian MG novel in which leaders of ARK keep shortening the list of words that make up their language. Told from the point of view of a young “wordsmith”
intent on keeping words, and the memories of a culture before ARK, alive. Listening: alternating between Cat Stevens and Joni Mitchell radio stations on Pandora.. Watching: The Great British Baking Show “The Holidays” (can’t stop!) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a gorgeous. sensual movie set in 1770 France, from the point of view of a woman artist commissioned
to paint a portrait of a woman destined for marriage.
Lucy: Reading:The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell - Richly detailed and full of suspense, this mysterious story is definitely one of those ones that has you sacrificing sleep for answers. Listening: Consider This from NPR Watching:Shadow and Bone - I have not read these books, but I really liked this show!
Nicki: Reading: Left of Karl Marx (it's really dense), Paradise by Toni Morrison (also really dense, in a completely different way) Listening: La Clarinette parisienne with Michael Collins & Noriko Ogawa. I don't usually listen to music when I am working outside on my back deck because, well, birds. But this is one album that
seems to be okay in the open air. Maybe because it's woodwinds? Watching: reruns of the original Star Trek. Do you think there is a warehouse in Hollywood somewhere filled to the brim with Styrofoam rocks?
SP: Reading: Arriving soon is No Modernism Without Lesbians, by the British biographer Diana Souhami because I absolutely cannot resist any book about the incredible women who lived and worked in Paris in
the early 20th century and I turn every page pea-green with envy and trying to decide whether I too could pull off wearing a monocle
Watching: I watched East Side, West Side last night, starring Barbara Stanwyck and James Mason, but the best scene belongs to a perfectly icy Gale Sondergaard.
1. The Hill We Climb Amanda Gorman, Viking, $15.99, 9780593465271 2. Sooley John Grisham, Doubleday, $28.95, 9780385547680 3. While Justice Sleeps Stacey Abrams, Doubleday, $28, 9780385546577 4. The Midnight Library Matt Haig, Viking, $26, 9780525559474 5. Project Hail Mary Andy Weir, Ballantine, $28.99,
9780593135204
HARDCOVER NONFICTION
1. The Premonition Michael Lewis, Norton, $30, 9780393881554 2. The Bomber Mafia Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown, $27, 9780316296618 3. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Charlie Mackesy, HarperOne, $22.99, 9780062976581 4. Caste Isabel Wilkerson, Random House, $32, 9780593230251 5. The Code Breaker Walter Isaacson, S&S,
$35, 9781982115852
Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Supporting independent bookstores in the South SIBA | 51 Pleasant Ridge Drive | Asheville, NC 28805
Useful Links SIBA Office Hours on Zoom by appointment. Available during regular business hours at 803-994-9530, or anytime at siba@sibaweb.com
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
no longer wish to receive these communications.
You can still sign up for RAMP Summer emails
The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA)
and the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) are coming together again for their fall virtual conference, New Voices, New Rooms (NVNR) September 27-October 1. NVNR will offer our beloved community of booksellers,
publishers, authors, and other industry partners a week of opportunities for education, networking, innovation, and fun. Our official theme for NVNR 2021 is “Opening Doors.”
The recent launch of the RAMP Summer email program [
The Blues : The Authentic Narrative of My Music and Culture
ADVANCING EQUITY, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION WORKSHOP SERIES
If or When I Call with Will Johnson
The Soulmate Equation with Christina Lauren
We Are Each Other's Harvest with Natalie Baszile
Love in Color by Bolu Babalola 
