One of the central images of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance 35th annual trade show, held from Sept. 23-25 at the Plaza Resort & Spa and Plaza Ocean Club Hotel in Daytona Beach, was a double bed with turned-down sheets, which had been placed near the registration booth. Part of a push to get booksellers to get in bed with a book blogger, the bed drew SIBA executive director Wanda Jewell and author Walter Mosely, who was at the show to talk about The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey and When the Thrill Is Gone. Blogger Rebecca Joines Schinsky (www.thebookladysblog.com) was also caught in bed, with writers Jim Minick, author of The Blueberry Years, and Sandra Brannan, who created the Liv Bergen mystery series.
If after walking past the bed there were any doubt that SIBA, or Jewell, is convinced that bookselling’s future depends on social networking, a nearby monitor displayed live tweets from the show (#SIBA10). To help those nervous about getting their tweet on, SIBA held a day-long bookseller school, the Southern Social Networking Summit Redux, the day before the show officially got underway, as well as a how-to workshop encouraging booksellers to Find Your Tweet Spot. “I loved the social networking,” said Linda Barrett-Knopp, general manager and senior buyer at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, N.C. “This is the best SIBA I’ve been to.”
But it’s not just booksellers who are being pushed to think beyond the book. For the first time authors like Steven Johnson (Where Good Ideas Come From) and Glenn Plaskin (Katie Up and Down the Hall) incorporated YouTube video promotions for their books into their talks. That made children’s author Deborah Wiles (Countdown) stand out even more in an a cappella rendition of Que Sera, Sera accompanied by photos of herself as an innocent young girl, which are quickly supplanted by pictures of basement bomb shelters and other responses to the Cuban missile crisis.
Although no figures were available at press time, many of Friday’s educational sessions were packed as were breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with authors, and even a late afternoon barroom reading with country musician Marshall Chapman, author of The Came to Nashville, who will make her motion picture debut later this fall as Gwyneth Paltrow’s road manager in Country Strong. Several panels brought together authors of similarly themed books, including one on cooking with Jessica B. Harris, whose High on the Hog tells the history of African-American cooking, and another on Team Me Up Buddy, which included bestselling novelist Sharyn McCrumb, who co-wrote Faster Pastor with NASCAR driver Adam Edwards.The only jarring note was a heckler at the Saturday morning breakfast who proclaimed herself a Christian and asked why Robert Barclay took the Lord’s name in vain so much in his debut novel, If Wishes Were Horses.
The exhibit hall was filled when the show opened, although few orders were placed. As one publisher explained, being at the show is an important opportunity for “laying on the hands,” or getting face-to-face time with booksellers. Michael McGroder, paperback regional sales manager for Penguin spoke for a number of colleagues when he said, “This is a show that I never miss.” SIBA offered a chance for connections on a variety of levels, and travel writer Linda Dini Jenkins, author of Up at the Villa, was able to use it both to promote hybrid publisher Great Little Books, where she works as senior editor, and to set up a blogging relationship with Over the Moon Bookstore and Artisan Gallery in Crozet, Va.
But beneath the show’s outward vibrancy were concerns about the potential havoc of storms and other natural disasters on the fragile bookstore ecosystems of coastal stores in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Elva Rella, owner of Patrick Paperbacks in Satellite Beach, one of the few independents remaining on Florida’s barrier islands, expressed concern about whether Mother Nature will let her hang on. Not that the economy has made it easier for stores in other parts of the South. At Fiction Addiction, a used bookstore in Greenville, S.C., which added new books to its inventory four years ago, owner Jill Hendrix saw sales dip in July and August to July 2008 levels. A signing by Nicholas Sparks earlier this month more than made up the difference, but she said, “I’m waiting to see what Christmas is going to do.”
If no single holiday title emerged from the show, perhaps that was only to be expected. As Ann Carlson, owner of Harborwalk Books in Georgetown, S.C., whose store is near a number of mass merchandisers noted, "What's big for other people is not going to be big for me." She doesn't stock the books that Wal-Mart heavily discounts. Instead she prefers to handsell regional titles like the University of North Carolina Press's The Coasts of Carolina. For Laura Keyes, owner of two-year-old Blue Elephant Book Shop in Decatur, Ga., SIBA offers an opportunity to gather books and information before she heads into the holiday season.
