Jessica Sognier, the owner of E. Shaver Bookseller in Savannah, Ga., nominated Norton field sales rep Abby Fennewald because of the way she goes above and beyond in all aspects of her job.
“She is always helpful, kind, and a champion of our store,” Sognier wrote in her nomination. “She not only is very good at her job, but an amazing person as well.” And, as far as Sognier is concerned, Fennewald’s 120-plus accounts in the Southeast—Alabama, the Carolinas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia—are “fortunate that Abby is in our lives.”
The feeling is mutual. Fennewald, who has been repping for Norton for the past six years, insists that, of the company’s seven field reps, she covers “the most fun territory” and gets to sell to “some of the greatest bookstores in the country, stores that live up to the promise of indie bookstores.”
Like so many publishers’ reps, Fennewald started out as a bookseller at an indie, which, today, is one of the accounts she serves. Soon after graduating from American University in Washington, D.C., in 2013 with a degree in communications, Fennewald says she lucked into bookselling when she got a job in the events department at Politics & Prose. Three years later, wanting a change of scenery, she moved to Austin, Tex., to work at Bookpeople as director of marketing and publicity. Returning to D.C. in 2019, Fennewald was hired by Norton—less than a year before Covid shut down the country. “I feel lucky to have had that first year,” she says, “how else could I have gotten to know all of these accounts, or for them to have gotten to know me?”
When Fennewald visits bookstores today, she doesn’t just spend time with the buyers and owners—she also talks to frontline booksellers. After all, she says, “a lot of bookselling involves those in-person connections” between seller and customer. Fennewald places so much importance on making in-person connections that she even helps out her accounts when they sell books at literary festivals. “I love them—you get to talk there about the books at length,” she says. “It makes it even more fun to sell books.”
