Day Eight: Children's Institute Book Conference
Today was the meat of this entire road trip, the American Booksellers Association Children's Book Conference. This was the reason we commenced this road trip. So, of course, we were not on the road today. The car sat idle in the parking garage.
Not that there weren't exciting moments today. Whenever we get together with other independent booksellers from across the country we feel the passion and energy of matching books with buyers and helping to facilitate literacy and reading. This conference was no exception. Although many indies had a tough winter due to cold weather, the passion remains and optimism for the independent bookselling industry remains. Nationwide, sales gains in 2014 so far have been modest but the number of independent bookstores across the country continues a four year trend of modest increases.
We heard from Tim Federle (Five, Six, Seven, Nate) at breakfast this morning. Tim has hung up his Broadway dancing shoes for authoring children's books. Tim wants each child to connect with what moves them. Books provide a connection for the child even if the child is different from the other children around. We heard from Chip Kidd (Go), a graphic designer who has authored several books and designed covers for hundreds of books, who has now created a children's book graphically explaining the graphic design process. And in between education sessions discussing book fairs, selling picture books, graduate level child development literacy, expanding author events, social media (a topic of every conference!) and storytelling, we had small roundtables with about twelve different publishers pushing their fall children's and young adult books.
But the clearly the highlight of the day for me occurred right after lunch. As an enticement for registering for the conference, Algonquin offered a framed original artwork by M. Sarah Klise of Sir Sidney's Circus from the Three Ring Rascals series, a new series for middle grade readers. One of the 125 conference attendees would win the artwork. The winning ticket was drawn just after lunch and it was mine! It was my fifteen minutes of fame as I accepted congratulations from fellow booksellers for the rest of the day. Look for the artwork in Redbery soon!
We are energized and enthusiastic for bookselling in Cable!
We're headed back north starting tomorrow morning intending on driving two consecutive six hundred mile days. That would mean an overnight somewhere around Wichita, Kansas.
Not that there weren't exciting moments today. Whenever we get together with other independent booksellers from across the country we feel the passion and energy of matching books with buyers and helping to facilitate literacy and reading. This conference was no exception. Although many indies had a tough winter due to cold weather, the passion remains and optimism for the independent bookselling industry remains. Nationwide, sales gains in 2014 so far have been modest but the number of independent bookstores across the country continues a four year trend of modest increases.
We heard from Tim Federle (Five, Six, Seven, Nate) at breakfast this morning. Tim has hung up his Broadway dancing shoes for authoring children's books. Tim wants each child to connect with what moves them. Books provide a connection for the child even if the child is different from the other children around. We heard from Chip Kidd (Go), a graphic designer who has authored several books and designed covers for hundreds of books, who has now created a children's book graphically explaining the graphic design process. And in between education sessions discussing book fairs, selling picture books, graduate level child development literacy, expanding author events, social media (a topic of every conference!) and storytelling, we had small roundtables with about twelve different publishers pushing their fall children's and young adult books.
But the clearly the highlight of the day for me occurred right after lunch. As an enticement for registering for the conference, Algonquin offered a framed original artwork by M. Sarah Klise of Sir Sidney's Circus from the Three Ring Rascals series, a new series for middle grade readers. One of the 125 conference attendees would win the artwork. The winning ticket was drawn just after lunch and it was mine! It was my fifteen minutes of fame as I accepted congratulations from fellow booksellers for the rest of the day. Look for the artwork in Redbery soon!
We're headed back north starting tomorrow morning intending on driving two consecutive six hundred mile days. That would mean an overnight somewhere around Wichita, Kansas.
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