Once again, Great Lakes Booksellers Association Executive Director Jim Dana is taking his show on the road. He and representatives from four Midwestern independent bookstores will be pounding the New York City pavement this week, in an intense week of promoting GLBA member bookstores to the New York publishing community. The group will also meet with other publishing industry insiders, including Book Sense personnel and key journalists at trade publications, during their trip.
Now in its the fourth year, the GLBA-sponsored annual bookseller jaunt to the Big Apple seems to be a resounding success, receiving high marks from past participants and greatly anticipated by this year's group of Manhattan-bound booksellers.
According to Dana, the GLBA initiated a regional bookseller trip to New York City in 2001 to open and strengthen lines of communication between booksellers and publishers. "We have an inferiority complex in the Midwest. We feel overlooked by New York publishers. We wanted publishers to pay attention to us, to know what good bookstores we have here, to send more authors our way. Plus, I noticed that whenever I spoke to New York publishers, they seemed hungry to know what was going on in the bookstores. They really wanted to know. It made sense to bring the two groups together," he told PW.
The week of March 8—12, four independent booksellers, chaperoned by Dana, will hopscotch all over Manhattan, visiting publishing houses. Each bookseller is expected to make a formal presentation, complete with handouts, about his or her store at each publisher meeting. Other than these formal presentations, the meetings are freewheeling affairs, with booksellers and publishers each poised to discuss their needs, give each other feedback and brainstorm on how each group can help the other in placing books in the hands of readers. Dana has scheduled meetings with 10 major publishers over the course of four days. "They're very busy days. Some days we see three publishers—one in the morning, one over lunch, and one in the afternoon," he said.
"The days don't end there," Dana added. "We'll go out to restaurants, take in a Broadway or off-Broadway show one evening and meet with the ABA/Book Sense people over dinner one night. We may even take a busman's holiday and visit some New York City bookstores. We're trying to give these booksellers a real New York City experience—riding the subway, taking cabs, staying at the Mayflower Hotel, seeing PW's offices. Stuff like that."
Despite the fact that the start of last year's GLBA bookstore trip coincided with a snowstorm slamming into New York, shutting the city down and emptying out publishing houses, participating booksellers deemed the week a great success. Several of last year's participants told PW that they already have reaped tangible benefits from the trip. "It was great," Rose Joseph, co-owner of the Magic Tree in Oak Park, Ill., said. "I've seen more authors in the past year and have had calls from publishers we didn't used to hear from. We're a lot busier with author appearances since I went on the trip last year." Tom Lowry, co-owner of Lowry Books in Three Rivers, Mich., echoed Joseph's words and added, "I feel like I've developed better relationships with sales reps and I know who to call now with co-op questions. It's easier to get things done if you can put a face to a name."
For Carol Rueger, co-owner of the Wooster Book Co., Wooster, Ohio, it wasn't just meeting New York publishers that made the trip worthwhile; networking with the other GLBA booksellers was even more valuable. "All of a sudden, you have colleagues to bounce ideas off of. The other booksellers were wonderful. It was wonderful to have colleagues from other areas to provide some perspective. I'd underestimated how important this is. And listening to other booksellers present to publishers gave me a lot of ideas that I could use in my own bookstore. That, to me, was the best part of the trip," she said.
This year's participating booksellers are Carol Besse and Michael Boggs, owners of Carmichael's in Louisville, Ky.; Mary Ellen Ahmad, owner of Aria Booksellers in Howell, Mich.; Barbara Siepker, owner of Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor, Mich.; and Sally Bulthuis, co-owner of Pooh's Corner in Grand Rapids, Mich. Bulthuis is clear about her goals and expectations for the trip. "This is a chance to reintroduce some of the major publishers to independent bookstores and to remind them that we still exist and are thriving. We'd like to be considered as a destination when they do author tours. I assume they'll also want to hear from us, they want feedback on customer service, sales rep issues, what's successful, what isn't . And I'm prepared," she said.
On the eve of leading his fourth group of booksellers to the heart of the American publishing world, Dana considers this annual junket "one of the best things that GLBA does to promote our region. The publishers get to talk to real booksellers selling their books and very accomplished booksellers come in and communicate their passion for books to those producing them. It's great for publishers, it's great for booksellers. It's a win-win situation all the way around."
