Booksellers from across the state got together in Pasadena for the California Independent Booksellers Alliance’s Fall Fest 2024, which took place September 17–18. Of the 177 bookseller members in attendance, 83 were first-timers and the trade show included programming for both seasoned booksellers and newcomers.

At a September 16 welcome reception at Vroman’s Bookstore and its wine bar, booksellers heard a conversation between City Lights Booksellers’ principal buyer Paul Yamazaki (Reading the Room) and Bookshop Santa Cruz head book buyer and CALIBA board president Melinda Powers. Official trade show business took place September 17–18, with booksellers meeting exhibitors, filling tote bags with ARCs, and attending education sessions on publisher co-op, inventory management, marketing, and alternative business models.

Attendance was down slightly from 2023’s Fall Fest in South San Francisco, possibly due to the location, said CALIBA executive director Hannah Walcher. CALIBA is the result of the 2020 merging of the Northern and Southern California Independent Booksellers Associations, and the now-statewide organization is figuring out how to hold meetings in places accessible to members throughout the vast territory.

Walcher took over as CALIBA head earlier this year, succeeding coexecutive directors Kristin Rasmussen and Ann Seaton. “This is still a new and very exciting time for CALIBA,” Walcher said. “We are at 280 stores and growing.” She reminded members of “the influence we could have in Sacramento,” the state capital, by working as a unified group of indie businesses. “It feels like a moment where we are creating real and lasting relationships with each other,” agreed Powers. “There is so much potential for CALIBA” to build social and professional bonds among booksellers, so that when challenges arise, members can consult with peers and follow successful examples.

American Booksellers Association leaders were in attendance too, including former Vroman’s CEO Alison Hill, who became CEO of the ABA in the fateful month of March 2020. “It’s my first time back to my old stomping grounds,” Hill said, referencing the pandemic. “Anything happen while I was gone?”

Hill reminded CALIBA members that Winter Institute registration opens September 19 and said she expects a quick sell out. She urged CALIBA to follow ABA’s efforts to intervene in monopolistic practices; ABA’s upcoming September 24–26 fly-in to Washington, D.C., with almost 50 booksellers traveling in support of the Credit Card Competition Act; and local school board elections that could install “bad actors” who threaten the freedom to read. In addition, Hill said ABA CFO P.K. Sindwani’s ABACUS report would be released in the coming weeks, contextualizing the “disappointing” news that “we have decreased net profit over the past year as an industry.”

Reps and authors introduce titles

CALIBA featured 46 exhibitors and 110 staffers. Nine sales representatives and publishers visited Whimsy, an events venue in Old Town Pasadena, to lead CALIBA’s annual rep picks bingo game. At the next morning’s rep picks breakfast, 18 more sales representatives offered their views on titles and topics. Toi Crockett of Simon & Schuster suggested a hybrid category, “romystery,” could be developing in YA. Wade Lucas of Penguin Random House touted the PRH Audio app and hinted that PRH “might experiment with early audiobooks” as a supplement to print and digital ARCs, drawing sounds of approval from the crowd.

PW’s 2023 rep of the year, university press representative Patricia Nelson, bid a bittersweet farewell to her longtime account, Yale University Press, whose distribution is moving to W.W. Norton. “I want to thank you for all those wonderful seasons,” Nelson said to book buyers and to her client.

Ingram Publishing Services’ Leslie Jobson's book choice was a fresh edition of Robert Frank’s 1959 The Americans (Aperture), which is being republished to coincide with a Frank exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. The classic photography book has long been beloved of antiquarians and collectors, and has gone in and out of stock. At PGW, Andrea Tetrick highlighted a paperback edition of Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, longlisted for the Booker Prize, and Obi Kaufman’s compact, illustrated The State of Fire: Why California Burns (Heyday).

In addition to rep picks, 31 authors talked about their books in various sessions and five more visited booths on the show floor. Breakfast keynote speaker Nnedi Okorafor spoke about her forthcoming novel, Death of the Author (William Morrow, Jan.), with Maryelizabeth Yturralde of Creating Conversations (Redondo Beach). Yturralde noted that Pasadena, Octavia Butler’s hometown, was an appropriate place to talk with Okorafor, a speculative author who’s written for Marvel and who also has a forthcoming graphic novel, The Space Cat (First Second, 2025), illustrated by Tana Ford.

Okorafor explained that Death of the Author is a braided narrative that weaves a near-future story about a novelist with chapters from that novelist’s “posthuman robot fable,” called Rusted Robots. Morrow’s production team created two matching covers, one for each fictional component.

Nine more authors sat with booksellers at lunch and, one by one, went onstage to talk about their latest titles. These included Ada Calhoun (Crush, Viking, Feb. 2025); TV executive Nayantara Roy (The Magnificent Ruins, Algonquin, Nov.); and wildland firefighter Jordan Thomas (When It All Burns, Riverhead, May 2025); and Instagram sensation Christine Mari, whose graphic memoir Halfway There (Little, Brown Ink, Oct.) recalls her experience visiting Japan as a Japanese American college student.

In addition, booksellers got an early peek at new titles in horror, YA romance, and children’s books from Matt de la Peña (Home, illustrated by Loren Long, Putnam, March 2025); Pam Muñoz Ryan (El Niño, illustrated by Joe Cepeda, Scholastic Press, May); Patrick Ness (Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody, illustrated by Tim Miller, Walker Books US, out now); and David Shannon (That’s Not Funny, David!, Orchard, March 2025).

Fall Fest 2025 will be held in South San Francisco.