ABA Winter Institute 2016: Conversations with Keynoters

Eleven years ago, the American Booksellers Association held its first Winter Institute to provide a warm, intimate setting where booksellers could learn from each other about best practices. This year’s three keynote speakers are carrying on that tradition with a series of talks to stimulate booksellers to think in a new way about what they do and how they do it.

Jan 08, 2016

As part of his Sunday morning presentation, consumer expert Martin Lindstrom, author of the soon-to-be-published Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends, selected five booksellers for an onstage business review. “Be warned, I’m tough,” he wrote in the introduction to his bookseller challenge on his website, “but most importantly I’m brutally honest (and yes, it tends to pay off).”

Monday begins with Amy Cuddy, who researches nonverbal behavior as an associate professor at Harvard Business School. Cuddy will talk about snap judgments and the subject of her newly released book, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges. Her research shows that mimicking postures associated with power and dominance helps people feel powerful.

The title of poet Kwame Alexander’s Tuesday breakfast talk is “The Idea Business: A Life Spent Writing and Selling Books.” Alexander, who received a 2015 Newbery Medal for The Crossover, a novel in verse, regards promotion as an important part of being an author.

ABA Winter Institute 2016: Conversations with Keynoters: ‘Small Data,’ Big Impact, With Martin Lindstrom

ABA Winter Institute 2016: Conversations with Keynoters: Power Posing, with Amy Cuddy

ABA Winter Institute 2016: Conversations with Keynoters: Translating Ideas into Sales, With Kwame Alexander

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A version of this article appeared in the 01/11/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Conversations with Keynoters