Several years after a group of young booksellers from different parts of the country began exploring ways to get together and share their concerns, both the American Booksellers Association and the regional trade organizations have stepped in to assist.
Although that core group of booksellers—Neil Strandberg of Tattered Cover in Denver; Julie Cowlishaw of Shaman Drum in Ann Arbor, Mich. (now with Ingram Publisher Services); Cindy Dach of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Ariz.; and Allison Hill of Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif.—have since aged out of the Emerging Leaders Project, a new wave of booksellers are continuing their efforts to give younger colleagues the tools they need—whether education or industry contacts—to advance their careers. With an assist from the ABA, the organization now has a board that includes a liaison from the ABA and a rudimentary Web site, www.ABAEmergingLeaders.org.
The goal, said Jessica Stockton Bagnulo of McNally Robinson Booksellers in New York City, who chairs the ABA's Emerging Leaders Council, is to provide the educational and networking opportunities younger booksellers need to become book industry professionals. While many younger booksellers are indeed on the front lines in dealing with customers, they are often excluded from programming aimed at development. To highlight this disconnect, Bagnulo quoted a bookseller at this fall's NAIBA trade show: “When I go into a bookstore, everyone I see is under 40; when I go to trade conferences, everybody is over 50.”
To date, much of the programming for emerging leaders at BEA, the Winter Institute and the regional shows has been intended to facilitate networking. Through surveys at the shows, the Emerging Leaders Council has been reaching out to frontline booksellers to find out what programs they would like to add. Although some booksellers have expressed interest in mentors and in more concrete programming sessions, the biggest response has been for a bookseller exchange program among stores, said Bagnulo.
At the same time, the council has begun to explore the differing needs of booksellers and new (but not necessarily under 40) bookstore owners. Susan Weis, owner of three-year-old breathe books in Baltimore, will head a separate emerging leaders track specifically for new and prospective bookstore owners. She said that although she appreciated getting help from longtime owners when she was setting up her store, there are some things that are easier to learn from someone who has gone through the process recently. “A fresh perspective can be really helpful to new people,” said Weis.
At the regional level, the New England Independent Booksellers Association has added more specific programming to its meetings. This fall's trade show included a panel led by Carole Horne, general manager of Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, on “Career Paths for Booksellers: I Love My Job, Now What?” to discuss job options for booksellers, ranging from becoming a buyer to moving to the publishing side of the business. And NEIBA recently named two board members as point people for a regional emerging leaders program: John Hugo of Andover Bookstore in Andover, Mass., and Karen Corvello, head buyer and operations manager of R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn. They will work with other board members to coordinate gatherings throughout the region, not just tied to the fall trade show.
