With robust attendance and a companionable crowd eager to reconnect, the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association is holding its annual FallCon in Denver from October 6–9. As the trade show began, 226 booksellers representing 89 stores had registered, along with 22 librarians. Eighty-five exhibitors and their 160 staffers awaited MPIBA members, and 57 featured authors were on the show schedule, with several more authors visiting the show floor.
“We have a completely full exhibit hall again this year,” said MPIBA executive director Heather Duncan. According to Duncan, the regional gathering welcomed “the most booksellers in a long while,” with the highest numbers since 2007. Compared to 2023, this FallCon added 25 more individual booksellers and 17 more bookstores, six of them new stores. Duncan estimated that 50 booksellers were first-time attendees.
Firehouse-turned-brewpub Station 26 hoisted its roller doors for an October 6 mix-and-mingle before the official meetings began. MPIBA’s members hail from Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming, and there was no shortage of conversation topics for folks from blue, red, and purple states, especially in this tense election year.
Duncan—who led first-time attendees on a guided tour of the exhibit hall on its opening night—told PW that MPIBA always aims to balance bookseller education with access to publishers and exhibitors. On the show’s first full day, as reps introduced lead titles at standing-room-only pitch sessions, booksellers also could migrate into and out of an open discussion space called “conversations with colleagues.” Conversation time was scheduled for those who wanted to talk about collaborations with businesses, schools, and libraries; compensation and benefits for staff; and strategies for buying and merchandising non-book sidelines and gifts.
On the second day of MPIBA, with the exhibit hall again open for business, members could pause in their browsing to stop by a booth called “The Expert Is In.” MPIBA created this option so that attendees could ask directed questions in between meetings or stick around to hear conversations on specific topics including merchandising and displays; receiving and returns; and bookstore finances.
Early arriving attendees also participated in an Edelweiss workshop. While there is no firm date for the switch to Edelweiss’s new view, bookstore staffers can get familiar with updated tools now. Software developer Claire Fields said that the reboot will bring “quicker load times and a better filtering experience” for users, as well as more intuitive design for accessing data on regional trends and category performance.
Edelweiss client success manager Gabrielle Costa walked the audience through how to generate a monthly, personalized shelf report to track inventory and set goals, and “a crowdsourced cheat sheet of the most-ordered forthcoming titles” to stay on top of pub dates. Using Edelweiss 360, Costa showed everyone how to create a quick, customized email campaign or staff-picks newsletter, creating book blurbs on the fly, or clipping staff reviews already posted to the platform.
MPIBA annually unites for FallCon in Denver, which booksellers noted will be the destination for the next American Booksellers Association Winter Institute, slated for February 23–26, 2025, with a February 22 pre-show kickoff called Ignite: BIPOC Bookseller Pre-Con.
MPIBA FallCon returns to Denver, October 5–8, 2025.
