Though it’s still early in the year, signs are pointing to a successful 2016 for independent bookstores, said Oren Teicher, CEO of the American Booksellers Association. He informally polled the attendees at the ABA Bookseller Forum SIBA held during the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance’s March 1 Day of Education in Atlanta. During the ABA Spring Forum, he asked for a show of hands from those who had seen an increase in sales over the past six months. The majority of the room indicated that sales have been up. Only a handful responded when asked if sales remained flat over the past six months; none of the booksellers indicated that sales were down.

“That is probably reflective of what we’re seeing nationally,” he said. “Numbers continue to be up. There’s always seasonal changes, there’s geographic changes, but sales for the first two months of 2016 appear to be tracking the same rate of growth of 2015 over 2014.” He’s wary of determining trends based only on two months of sales data, he added. “But the news appears to be good.”

During the forum, booksellers also expressed an interest in diversifying their inventory by improving relationships with small and university presses. “I want a more diverse inventory, to try to reach out to a new segment of the population that we haven’t really worked with,” said Jill Hendrix, SIBA president and owner of Fiction Addiction in Greenville, S.C.

Hendrix said the returns process with smaller publishing houses is often “a hassle.” She added, “They’re less generous and pickier about returns. But these are the kinds of books I want to support and have in my store.”

Booksellers were also interested in the health of their competition – Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

Teicher anticipates that Barnes & Noble will continue to close stores in 2016. “Fifteen years ago, they were in a race with Borders to open stores in some of the most expensive real estate in the world,” he said, even if it didn’t make economic sense. Borders has since gone out of business, but he believes Barnes & Noble is “righting the ship and they’re going to survive.”

The chain’s survival is in the best interest of independent bookstores, he added. “So much of the infrastructure that has been created to serve the independent bookstore industry also serves them,” he said.

As for Amazon, he said, the company has been “pushing the envelope pretty aggressively,” raising questions about its behavior. “Certainly there are areas under which the Department of Justice has room to investigate some of Amazon’s practices,” he said. “What the result of that would be, I can’t predict for sure.”

He also stressed that all independent bookstores should offer a fully transactional e-commerce website. “The expectation today among consumers is that e-commerce is a built-in way that people use the web,” he said. Whether customers use it to get a preview of what’s in stock at a store or to obtain information they use to shop elsewhere, “it’s increasingly critical for a store’s success that they have e-commerce options.”

He added that based on a recent survey of booksellers, the ABA plans to offer a less expensive version of IndieCommerce, its e-commerce platform. “We’re looking to create, for lack of a better term, an IndieCommerce ‘light’ product that would be at significantly less cost,” he said. It wouldn’t include all IndieCommerce features and all sales would be fulfilled at a central location, but it would serve as a functioning website for bookstores.

Teicher admitted that this could “cannibalize” the ABA’s business as users of the full IndieCommerce platform might be drawn to the less expensive version. “But at the end of the day, we’re a trade association,” he said. “We want to put the best tools in your hands so you can exist, function and operate.”