With fewer booksellers making the trip to regional trade shows and publisher attendance off as well, it is time to reexamine the purpose of the fall events, parties on both sides agree. This fall's Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association (MPBA) meeting had 30 fewer exhibitors than in 2005; the New England Independent Booksellers Association (NEIBA) could have fit its exhibits into half the space. Observed Lisa Knudsen, MPBA executive director: "Our concern is, was this year a blip or will it turn out as a watershed?"
Knudsen and other executive directors are concerned that given industry estimates that the independent slice of the book-buying market fluctuates between 9% and 12%, the large houses may not just take less exhibit space in the future but could cut their presence entirely. While Karen Torres, v-p, director of marketing for Hachette Book Group USA, said such a drastic step is not contemplated by HBG, that doesn't mean she is satisfied with the status quo. "We want the shows to continue," Torres said. "But there has to be change."
Many regionals have instituted some changes. Two years ago, Great Lakes Booksellers Association (GLBA) introduced minifocus groups/publisher roundtables to give publishers and booksellers more face time. This year Midwest Booksellers Association (MBA) replaced its book-and-author breakfast with one for publishers to meet booksellers. Still, said Neil Strandberg, manager of operations for the Tattered Cover in Denver, two nagging questions remain: "Just how useful are the regional trade shows? and what are we going to do to create something new that will be just as important to trade associations in the coming years?" Hut Landon, executive director of Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, acknowledged that "trade shows are never going to work they way they did 10 years ago."
Although the trade shows are now the regional associations' second largest source of funding following the holiday catalogues, they were never intended to be about the money. Yet the shows—and the associations themselves—would have to be radically altered if publisher funding dried up. "I don't want SIBA to exist so I have a job, but because it matters," said Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance executive director Wanda Jewell, who is considering next year paring the trade show from two days to one, with one additional day for education.
Ironically, booksellers and publishers have come to question the regionals' value in part because of the phenomenal success of ABA's Winter Institute, which energized booksellers in a way the regionals once did. A shift in membership has also contributed to soul searching. SIBA, for example, has shrunk from 600 bookstores in 1995 to 300 today, even with the addition of stores from what once was Mid-South. Other regions, like GLBA with 200 to 220 bookstores, have had steady or a slight increase in numbers in recent years, but many of the newer members are small stores outside major urban areas and specialty stores.
Even more problematic is most shows' continued emphasis on order-taking. As one publisher, who asked not to be identified, pointed out, "The shows were invented before just-in-time ordering and computerized inventory. The trade show is based on an outdated model. The shows haven't changed as dramatically as their stores have." Even commission reps, who once looked to the shows as their bread and butter, find them, as one noted off the record, "an enormous waster of time and money. I'd like to have a table and put up a list of my specials and an invitation asking buyers to come up to my hospitality suite. It's not a selling show anymore. I really feel my greatest benefit is, I get to talk with people in a non-pressured way."
Thom Chambliss, executive director of Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) agreed that chasing orders is an outdated approach for the shows. "Publishers don't want them and booksellers are geared up to order from distributors and electronically," he said. The board of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) agreed with that assessment; earlier this month NAIBA announced that it will rename its show the Booksellers Sales Conference to underscore that frontline booksellers serve as an extension of publishers' sales forces. NEIBA, which has offered raffles to encourage order-writing in the past, is surveying its members before it proceeds with planning its 2007 show.
"The role [of the regionals] these days is more a question of publicity," said PNBA's Chambliss. "Publishers are seeing shows as opportunities to promote authors." PNBA was the first regional to charge publishers for author autographings and breakfasts. And it has one of the most packed educational days of any regional, with five rooms operating simultaneously.
In fact, education continues to be the number one reason most booksellers attend shows. Books Inc., with 11 stores in California, sends 80 booksellers to the regionals on the West Coast; between 35 and 40 booksellers at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena attend the rep picks, educational sessions and movable feast in Southern California. "It's an opportunity for my staff to get really great training," said general manager Allison Hill. "I find the educational programming and the networking to be invaluable for me and for my staff," adds Catherine Weller, retail operations manager of Sam Wellers Bookstore in Salt Lake City.
But to make the trade show, or exhibit part, of today's regionals work, will require more selectivity on the part of publishers. "I can't understand why publishers bring all those books," said David Didriksen, president of Willow Books & Cafe in Acton, Mass. "I've got a backroom filled with review copies no one wants to read." Workman Publishing has already gotten that message, said sales director Steven Pace, who noted that Workman goes to shows with just a few books to promote. For a smaller house like Peachtree Publishers in Atlanta, Ga., the regionals offer a good opportunity to zero in on a few things, said associate publisher Barbara Witke, who used SIBA to launch a picture book by folksinger John McGutcheon. The exposure helped sell out the first printing of his Christmas in the Trenches.
What do other publishers want? Carl Lennertz, v-p of independent retailing at HarperCollins, applauded moves that have given publishers more places to bring booksellers and authors together, but added, "We need one more change: more rep presentations and less trade show time." Lennertz said that he has advised all regional directors, "If you have a second booth day, just drop it.'" Craig Popelars, who handles marketing for Algonquin, would like more one-on-one time with booksellers. He would prefer to do away with the freebies given out at the shows and invest the money to help bring more booksellers to the events. And some publishers would like to see fewer fall showsby merging the NEIBA and NAIBA shows or MPBA with one of the regionals on the West Coast. "We've had some joint shop talks," said GLBA's Jim Dana. "We had one in Wisconsin last year with the MBA folks, and we'll do one in Kentucky with SIBA." But that doesn't mean that he or any other executive director wants to share the planning—and income—from their second largest moneymaker.
Two years ago when MBA was redoing its mission statement, executive director Susan Walker recalled, "One of the members of our board said, 'What we really want to do is sell the damn things,' meaning books." At the end of the day, a good fall regional show should do just that.
