Amid the Trump administration's attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion and dismissal of book bans as a "hoax," the American Booksellers Association’s Winter Institute in Denver provided a space to talk about the future of independent bookselling. All around the trade show, ABA members and exhibitors are engaging in frank conversations about fortifying the indie bookstore channel in politically polarized times, serving their communities across the country, and keeping their customers informed in print, audio, and digital formats.
Introducing the opening breakfast keynote on February 24, ABA CEO Allison Hill firmly expressed the organization's support for DEI initiatives and the freedom to read. “Great books are written by everyone, and they should be available to everyone,” Hill said, prompting cheers from the audience. “Authors spin the world’s fear, pain, and joy into gold; you help readers discover gold, and you enrich their lives.”
Hill also tipped a hat to Ingram Content Group, which has committed to being ABA’s lead sponsor for Winter Institute and Children’s Institute for the next two years. “I see their commitment to the indies every day,” she said. She also encouraged ABA members to join Batch for Books, the free platform for managing publisher payments, noting that Simon & Schuster is now integrated with Batch—meaning all of the Big Five publishers (in addition to Arcadia, Blackstone, Gardners US, IPG, and Microcosm) are now Batch users, enabling paperless invoice management.
Following an audio clip of U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón reading the title poem from her forthcoming Startlement (Milkweed Editions, Sept.), author Ocean Vuong took the stage and delivered a galvanizing talk that had booksellers and Hill wiping away tears. Vuong, whose new novel The Emperor of Gladness (Penguin Press) is out in May, said he came to his love of reading as a teenager when his mother—a Vietnamese refugee who could not read English—urged him to visit a bookstore. He recalled her telling him, “Go in there. Read everything. Especially what you don’t understand.”
“I’m so moved by that,” Vuong said, “because it’s still what I tell my students” at New York University, where he now teaches creative writing. At the bookstore he visited at age 18, he picked up Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Poetry as Insurgent Art, which occasioned a pilgrimage to City Lights in San Francisco. His fate was sealed.
Booksellers buzzed about Vuong’s talk in person and on social media all day, notably his insistence on the power of everyday language in art, and importance of publishing diverse voices. “Imagine Toni Morrison writing without Toni Morrison—how did she do it?” Vuong marveled. He urged listeners to read widely and openly, and to ask a question he often hears at bookstores: “What do you like to read?”
Black Bookstore Owners Speak Out
February 25 featured another motivating breakfast keynote, “From Resilience to Resistance: The Legacy and Future of Black-Owned Bookstores.” Moderated by Char Adams, author of Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore (Tiny Reparations, Nov.), a panel of four Black bookstore owners swapped stories about the trade and the movement that provoked laughter, tears, and applause from an energized audience.
"I am loving all the conversation in this room, at this conference; I am rejoicing,” declared Donya Craddock, the co-owner of the Dock Bookshop in Fort Worth, Tex. before introducing the panel. "I want to give a round of applause to the ABA for their commitment to diversity and diverse perspectives.” After asking all the Black booksellers in the audience to stand and be recognized, Craddock introduced Adams and the panelists: Maura Cheeks of Liz’s Book Bar in Brooklyn; Jake Cumsky-Whitlock of Solid State Books in Washington, D.C.; DJ Johnson of Baldwin & Co. in New Orleans; and Janet Webster Jones of Source Booksellers in Detroit—about whom Craddock declared, “all hail to the queen."
The quartet discussed how their stores came to be, their philosophies of bookselling as Black entrepreneurs, and the importance of Black bookstores in the history of bookselling in the U.S. After all, Johnson pointed out, “you cannot tell the history of America without Black people’s contributions," adding that Black bookstores have always sold books that “tell the truth about who and what America is” because “you can only do that through Black stories.”
The four stores differ in their approaches to bookselling: Liz's Book Bar is a wine bar, coffee shop, and bookstore rolled into one; Solid State embraces a “Black forward” model in a general bookstore environment; Baldwin & Co. comprises a bookstore, an event space, a bar, an Airbnb, and a courtyard that can accommodate 800 people; and Source Booksellers is a small outfit focusing on nonfiction and books relating to Detroit. But these bookstores all have one thing in common: they are all community hubs for diverse customers. Cheeks recalled that her grandmother routinely invited people into her home and would give them books. “So I grew up with a sense of wanting to connect with strangers and and wanting to create a space where strangers can connect with one another," she said.
It was inevitable that the discussion would address the current political climate. Johnson noted that “books are powerful weapons in the war of ideas [and] we are engaged in a massive war of ideas. We as booksellers, everyone in this room, we’re on the front lines of preserving our democracy. We’re on the front lines of fighting for equality and fighting against oppression.” Cumsky-Whitlock added that Black bookstores are “vulnerable with the war on DEI, those Black spaces, Black comfort zones, or other places.” Johnson pointed out that no one “has to burn books to stop a revolution: you just have to convince people to stop reading,” which is why, he said, he's committed to demonstrating the importance of reading by giving away books that have been challenged or banned, something he is now able to do thanks to Baldwin & Co.’s multiple revenue streams.
Jones noted that “literacy, literature, and literary life have always been at the base of movements,” and that libraries and bookstores are on the front lines and “keep the revolution going. The revolution is going on all the time in every place.” Books, she argued, are essential: they remind people, that no matter their circumstances, “they are human, they are alive, they are real, they are wanted, they are qualified to be human beings on this planet.”
The second day of WI2025 concluded with the traditional evening author reception, which this year featured 72 authors signing copies of their books for close to 1,000 booksellers, who packed the Sheraton Hotel's grand ballroom. WI2025 will conclude on Wednesday evening.
