Former Northern California Independent Booksellers Association executive director Hut Landon is credited with stressing the importance of independent bookselling and putting the I in NCIBA. Now that Landon officially handed off running NCIBA to Calvin Crosby, PW talked to Crosby about his plans for the organization.
Crosby’s first job out of college was at San Francisco’s Book Passage, and he brings over two decades of bookselling experience to the association, and has served for 10 years on the NCIBA board. For him, bookselling is serious work: “I really want to see new booksellers engaged. This is a career. You’re effecting change, you’re affecting culture, and when you put a book in someone’s hand you’re impacting generations.” With young booksellers in the Bay Area facing the challenge of affordable housing, Crosby said he wants to “strategize on ways to get them to be able to afford to stay engaged.”
NCBA was incorporated in 1982, and the I was added in 1993. Independent booksellers are a key focus of the association’s initiatives, which include Independent Bookstore Day, an event that NCIBA is extremely proud of and that began as California Bookstore Day. Crosby said Independent Bookstore Day “will continue to change the narrative on a national level of how Indie bookstores are not only here to stay but will continue to grow.”
Crosby said it’s also exciting to be able to step into the NCIBA role when the trade is flourishing. “For so many years we were trying to stay in business, and now we have thriving businesses.” He noted that overall sales for member stores are up by about 10% so far this year, relative to 2014. “It’s a different business now. People can make a living. You’re not putting your rent on a credit card like we did in the past.”
In the future, Crosby wants to enhance “what is already working” by having more education and gatherings where booksellers can share ideas. He wants to be able to “enhance the stores individually as well as NCIBA collectively.” One of the first changes he made was changing the organization’s monthly newsletter to a weekly format, in order to showcase what member stores are doing to drive their business.
Crosby also hopes to bring back the road shows NCIBA once did: “The road shows went away because we got busy. We did big ones, and I’m looking to do smaller ones.” He also once led a NCIBA committee called Peer Eye for the Bookseller, for which he went to bookstores throughout the region to help them on specific issues, such as “traffic flow, scheduling, or wall color.” Crosby added, “That’s in my DNA. I’m really looking forward to doing more of those things.”
Veteran children’s bookseller Ann Seaton is serving as administrator, and Crosby said that his “commitment to kids books quadruples with her here.” One of his first goals is to work with the Northern California Children’s Booksellers Alliance (NCCBA) to “provide additional opportunities for children’s booksellers to gather and expand on the incredible work they are already doing.”
On inheriting the role from Landon, Crosby said, “Hut has been such a huge influence in my life professionally. I’m not Hut, but he has mentored me and taught me many things that I can take into the next phase of NCIBA. I’m excited to do it in my own way.”
