A week after Winter Institute 2025 wrapped up in Denver on February 26, the American Booksellers Association dedicated Thursday’s issue of its weekly Bookselling This Week newsletter to respond to criticisms raised at a contentious WI2025 community forum. During that forum, booksellers criticized the ABA leadership and board for their refusal for more than a year to take a clear stand in support of indie booksellers who have been attacked for selling books about Palestine, as well as authors who are Palestinian and/or have spoken out against the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. Other speakers raised concerns about double standards, some related to compensation, in the organization's treatment of its members. Booksellers had raised similar concerns at the community forum at WI2024 in Cincinnati.

Perhaps John Evans, a past ABA board member who currently owns Camino Books in a San Diego suburb, summed it up best, when he said at the WI2025 community forum: "We aren't asking you to come out with a stance on the Israeli war. We are asking you to support booksellers in a censorious environment by making this statement publicly that it is not antisemitic to provide books to people who want them. All of this falls within the framework of a bookselling organization. This is not a political statement. This is a consensual, understood, fundamental principle of what we all do, and it's hurting us. You not supporting that. It's offending us."

In a letter signed by all 12 ABA board members that appeared in BTW, the board emphasized that it, “along with the staff of American Booksellers for Free Expression and ABA, condemns all attacks on bookstores, in particular the targeting of bookstores who have chosen to highlight Palestinian books and authors in their stores. Each bookstore’s curation is their own expression of their freedom of speech, and verbal attacks, demands to carry or not carry certain titles, and threats to stores are not acceptable.” The board also promised to support any booksellers “during times of persecution, harassment, curation challenges, and other attacks on booksellers and stores.”

The ABA wrote in a separate statement, which also appeared in BTW, that booksellers have been offered support, resources, education, crisis counseling, and provided with a hotline by ABA staff. “This is the work that ABA is empowered to do by our ends policies and allowed to do as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit trade association,” the ABA declared. “We cannot make a political statement on behalf of our members, but we can and do support our members in their right to express those views.” The organization added: “Book curation is a form of speech, and it must remain free. We condemn any harassment or threat to our members that aims to abridge this freedom.”

The ABA also emphasized that “censorship of marginalized voices because of their identity is unacceptable. This includes censorship of Black and brown authors. This includes the censorship of LGBTQIA2S+ authors, emphatically including trans authors. This includes the censorship of Jewish and Muslim authors. And it includes the censorship of Palestinian authors, Palestinian books, booksellers who support Palestine, and booksellers who merely include Palestinian authors in their inventory.”

Trust Issues

The ABA also used BTW to try to defuse additional complaints raised by booksellers at the community forum, including discrepancies in the financial compensation provided to speakers and panelists participating in Winter Institute, as well as restrictions placed on the freedom of expression of moderators of panels. The organization highlighted a statement explaining how compensation for speakers is determined, a subject raised in the meeting by Jazzi McGilbert, owner of Reparations Club in Los Angeles.

“I do appreciate their disclosure of their compensation policy because it confirms the issues I’ve been raising" McGilbert told PW. "They sometimes make exceptions to their stated policy, and equity has not been my experience; I’m not sure what the policy is if they can make exceptions at every turn.”

McGilbert explained that the ABA offered her a standard $100 honorarium to participate on an education panel, but denied her a one-day registration to the trade show. When McGilbert learned that similar presenters had received a complimentary registration, travel, and accommodations, she raised the issue with the ABA but was told she was incorrect; the ABA later acknowledged that compensation varied among panelists. "The notion that I was not receiving the same initial offer was troubling to me," McGilbert said. Nevertheless, she agreed to speak on the panel and pay for her own registration, at which point the ABA offered a scholarship to cover the registration cost.

When all was said and done, “I did not pay for my registration,” McGilbert said, “but that was not their initial offer, their second offer, or their third offer. It was made under duress. I have tried so many other avenues of trying to make them correct course,” and the offer of a scholarship bothered her: "In my opinion, scholarships are need-based, and I don't want to take that away from anyone." Now, having spoken out about her treatment at the community forum, she said, “I feel like I’ve been demonized by the organization.”

McGilbert added that "the documented disparities in my case—which the ABA has acknowledged in writing—suggest this review process has failed to produce the transparency or equity they claim to strive for. I've attempted to address these issues through internal channels, following the ABA's grievance processes. Instead of resolution, I experienced retaliatory actions" in private and by ABA staff during the community forum. "I remain committed to improving the ABA and advocating for equitable treatment of all booksellers, particularly Black booksellers and those from underrepresented groups," McGilbert said.

In addition, the ABA noted in BTW that it had looked into an allegation made by Nadia Alawa, the owner of Mavey Books, in Ardmore, Pa., during the community forum, that at least three moderators—including Alawa, who is Muslim, and Veronica Liu, the founder of Word Up Bookshop in New York City, who had spoken up about Gaza and its impact on U.S. booksellers at WI2024—had been instructed by an ABA staff member during a pre-WI2025 moderator training Zoom call to resist going off topic during their sessions and to redirect any conversation about Palestine.

Last year, ahead of WI2024 in Cincinnati, the ABA sent a memo to moderators providing them with a template response to employ in order to shut down any discussion of Palestine during their panel sessions; the ABA told PW that no such memo was issued this year, which was confirmed by the moderators PW spoke to. While several WI2025 moderators contacted by PW reported that they were not given any instructions about Palestine in their own trainings this year, Ashley Mireles-Guerrero, founder of Judging by the Cover Bookstore in Fresno, Calif., reported a similar experience to that of Alawa. Mireles-Guerrero said she was "given the directive not to field questions about 'the Israel/Palestine issue' as a moderator. It's distressing that an organization that claims to actively support free speech and expression explicitly asked us (its members and volunteers) not to speak freely."

In BTW, the ABA acknowledged that a mistake had been made, writing that “the staff member should not have used Palestine as an example. The example did not align with the training’s purpose and it contradicted ABA’s explicit free expression value and commitment. The staff member has been addressed and training will be provided to all ABA staff to ensure that free expression continues to be supported at ABA events.”

Questions Remain

Evans, of Camino Books, applauded the ABA's efforts to answer the calls for action. He said he hopes the organization's goal of transparency "extends not just toward members but outward to publishers, public figures, other cultural institutions and organizations, and the media. Censorship is never well-intentioned, even in defense of what you believe." He also sees improved communication as "a shared task—we have to ask clear questions based on what we know are the limitations of the organization’s mandate, and the board has to come to some kind of majority agreement to clearly respond. These things can take time."

For others who spoke up at the forum last week, the ABA's statements don't go far enough. “My questions remain mostly unanswered,” Alawa told PW. “Why are booksellers discouraged from free discussion at ABA events and panels, and who determines which topics members can discuss? What is the hidden agenda of which topics can be discussed? Does the board know that ABA restricts members from discussing certain topics? What other topics are being discouraged?”

Alawa argued that “indie booksellers are obligated to speak up for the voiceless [and] battle ongoing censorship." These principles motivated her to step up when the ABA “censored what we could talk about at panels and during the community forum.” Ultimately, Alawa said, “the ABA contradicted their commitment to transparency and improved communication when they took seven days to send out a commentary on their censorship and reaction to discussions of Palestine and Israel."

Emily Autenrieth, owner of A Seat at the Table in Elk Grove, Calif., agreed with Alawa, saying that the ABA board's letter on combating transparency “is half an answer and evades concerns.” She points out that, between the first protest at WI2024 and the second at WI2025, a year went by before the ABA publicly acknowledged members' concerns over Palestine. “The ABA has stood with—and explicitly named—other groups whose rights, voices, and selves have faced erasure,” Autenrieth said. “We demand that [the organization] stop ignoring discrimination against one marginalized group while uplifting others."

Alawa added that the ABA board's letters "assure us that we are all equal booksellers, but do not give any insight into censorship and free expression of opinion. We indie booksellers deserve, and many of us demand, full transparency on ABA’s policy on freedom of expression, so we can share and tell the stories that matter to us and to our communities.”

This story has been updated with further information and for clarity.