Booksellers CEO Lincoln Gould reports on Washington

Last week Booksellers CEO Lincoln Gould travelled to Washington DC to meet with other International Bookseller Associations.  See Lincoln's photos on Flickr.

One of the highlights of what was a very productive week for Gould, was an agreement on licensing the highly successful bookselling marketing toolbox, IndieBound, created by the American Booksellers Association (ABA).

• Read about Attending the English Language Booksellers Associations meeting.
• Read about the Advocates of Independent Retail meeting.
• Read about the Sixth Winter Institute.

Read about the opportunities that have arisen from Lincoln's Washington visit.

IMAGE: examples of IndieBound marketing campaigns.

Attending the English Language Booksellers Associations meeting
The  primary purpose for the visit was an invitation from Tim Godfray of the Booksellers Association UK and Ireland, issued jointly with ABA’s Oren Teicher and sent to the CEO’s of all English language bookseller associations.

Godfray and Teicher wanted to convene a meeting to discuss key issues for all bookseller organisations including digitisation, tax issues, co-operation on marketing, supply chain, training and related issues.

The take-up of the initiative was excellent, with CEO's from the UK and Ireland, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand attending.

The eight hour meeting was held on Monday January 17 and timed to precede the ABA’s annual Winter Institute program. Dubbed an ELBA meeting, English Language Booksellers Associations, this was an intensive working session. Each association attending was given 15 minutes to present an overview of their operations and projects.

Positive benefits for Booksellers NZ included: ELBA countries have much in common, and meeting with associates has strengthened the relationships that will ensure Booksellers NZ members can use and participate in ABA and BA programs.

IMAGE: Delegates to English Language Booksellers Assosciations inagural meeting, Washington DC 2011. From left, Lincoln Gould, CEO Booksellers NZ; Tim Godfray, CEO, Booksellers Assn of the United Kingdom and Ireland (BA); Oren Teicher, CEO American Booksellers Assn; Lee Trentdue, Vice-President Canadian Booksellers Association; Joel Becker, CEO Australian Booksellers Assn.

Advocates of Independent Retail meeting

ELBA executives also attended a meeting on January 18 for an ‘Advocates of Independent Retail’ (AIR) a move by the ABA to develop stronger ties between independent local businesses in communities across the States. AIR involves retailers of all kinds plus farmers markets, food outlets and restaurants in a ‘buy local’ campaign.

Being there meant getting insight and ideas about the kind of independent store co-promotion that is having success in the US.

The Sixth Winter Institute

The sixth Winter Institute ran from 19 - 21 January in truly seasonal temperatures – minus eight degrees if you ventured out.

Because the location was Washington DC, a major emphasis for the ABA was on political issues such as sales tax.

Time was set aside for delegates to go to Capitol Hill to meet their state senators and congressional representatives.

The ABA Board and CEO met President Obama in the Oval Office and presented him with books for his family.

The President told them that one problem with his high office is that he couldn’t browse in bookshops like he used to!

IMAGE: A sell-out crowd of 500 participants at this years Winter Institute.

Other organisations had similar concerns to Booksellers New Zealand...

Sales tax varies between States, and the same distortions Australia and New Zealand experience, with online purchases of books from countries where books are not subject to a sales tax, occuring in trans-state online buying.

The ABA has been working for some time on persuading state politicians to pass legislation to require sales tax be collected by cross border online retailers.

Texas is the latest state to do so, and has sent one famous online book retailer a bill for $240 million for unpaid tax.

From the ELBA meeting, Wi6 proceedings and other meetings held during Lincoln Gould’s visit, the following opportunities have emerged...

ABA’s IndieBound promotional programs, also currently used by the BA and about to be adopted by the Australian Booksellers Association, will be licensed to Booksellers NZ for use at a nominal sum and yearly subscription.

IndieBound is the online marketing toolbox developed by the ABA to provide members with promotional and point of sale materials promoting reading and book buying.

Booksellers can “cherry pick” the materials they want to use (see example poster, right), download PDF files from the ABA website and have the materials printed locally or supplied by ABA.

Oren Teicher advised the ELBA meeting that ABA members who utilised IndieBound marketing tools had increased their Christmas sales by 5.5%, as against a growth of only 2.2% by those who had not used IndieBound.

IndieCommerce, a program by ABA providing members with a service to develop websites and market books online, has also now created a vital infrastructure by which ABA members can sell e-books as part of an agreement with Google books.

“This infrastructure may allow Booksellers NZ to possibly fast-track an e-book selling infrastructure for our members,” says Lincoln Gould.

However, he notes that following a Winter Institute session on selling e-books: “There is more to selling e-books and the related customer service than I expected because of the various models of e-readers and varied download platforms and sources.”

Supply chain services.
Brought up at the ELBA meeting and also the subject of a fringe meeting at the Winter Institute, Lincoln was made aware of the BA’s subsidiary, Batch Ltd. Essentially this is a clearing house for booksellers to pay all publisher/supplier bills with one online payment – think the old Booksellers NZ clearing house service, upgraded for this decade.

Batch has been enthusiastically adopted by booksellers and publishers in UK and Europe and will be trialed in America this year.

BA’s Godfray says it would be a simple matter to introduce Batch to NZ if sufficient support was available from publishers.

“The visit to the Winter Institute and the other meetings not only gave us new ideas to pursue, like the Batch scheme, but it also enabled Booksellers NZ to build on initiatives commenced a year ago, working and learning from the ABA.

"These are now available as detailed programs which will add to our effectiveness as booksellers in our own market,” concludes Lincoln Gould

Glossary
English Language Booksellers Associations (ELBA)
Booksellers Association of the UK and Ireland (BA)
American Booksellers Association (ABA)
Australian Booksellers Association not abbreviated
Winter Institute 6 (Wi6)

Twitter a source of information
Lincoln kept his tweets flowing all week, commenting and informing through the Booksellers NZ Twitter feed. Read tweets from everyone about the WI6 conference.

A tech tip...
Lincoln also learnt about Quick Response (QR) codes, which are widely used in the US for downloading  information onto smart phones. 

QR codes are great for use as shelf talkers in bookshops. 

Derek Dryden from Better Read Than Dead bookshop in Sydney has a QR tag on the back of his business card. If you have an iPhone then Lincoln recommendsTagReader and QRReader as two good, free applications to download .

By Jillian Ewart, writer for The Read.