American Booksellers Association

Why Indie Bookstores Are on the Rise Again
September 12, 2014

he recent news of the opening of an independent bookstore on Manhattan's Upper West Side was greeted with surprise and delight, since a neighborhood once flush with such stores had become a retail book desert. The opening coincides with the relocation of the Bank Street Bookstore near Columbia University, leading the New York Times to declare, "Print is not dead yet - at least not on the Upper West Side." Two stores don't constitute a trend, but they do point to a quiet revival of independent bookselling in the United States. They also underscore

Amazon Is NOT the Vladimir Putin of the Publishing World
June 12, 2014

Can you believe those...those...those...sons of bitches at Amazon? After launching almost 20 years ago and making virtually every book-new, used, dead-tree, electronic, audio, and I'm guessing any day now, olfactory-available to everyone in America at good-to-great prices, the company's true character now stands revealed. It's not pretty, folks. Despite a huge market share, Amazon apparentlystill wants books, especially the e-books that everyone agrees are the future of the medium, to be cheaper than what publishers and big-name authors want you to pay for them.

Indie Booksellers Join Hachette's Battle with Amazon
June 6, 2014

Independent booksellers in America are weighing into the dispute between Amazon and Hachette with a series of banners telling potential customers "Thanks, Amazon, the indies will take it from here", while comedian and Hachette author Stephen Colbert is urging his viewers to plaster their books with "I didn't buy it on Amazon" stickers.

The disagreement between the retail giant and the publisher, which is believed to be over terms, has been played out in public since early last month, and has seen Amazon.com delay delivery on more than 5,000 Hachette titles, according to the publisher

James Patterson: ‘If Amazon Is the New American Way, Then Maybe It Has to Be Changed’
May 30, 2014

At a luncheon today at Book Expo America, the publishing trade fair that opened yesterday at the Javits Center, the American Booksellers Association honored James Patterson as its Indie Champion Award Winner. The one-man best-seller factory might have been an unlikely candidate for the honor a couple of years ago, but this year Patterson pledged to give $1 million to independent bookstores nationwide. And lately he's become increasingly exercised about the biggest topic at the convention: the dispute between Amazon and Hachette (the conglomerate that happens to publish Patterson

BEA 2014: Bricks-and-Mortar Rebounding
May 29, 2014

Wednesday's BookExpo panel on the future of bricks-and-mortar retailing couldn't have been scheduled at a more auspicious time for indies: the day after the American Booksellers Association announced a resurgence in the number of independent bookstores.

For the first time since 2005, there are more than 2,000 independent outlets in the U.S. Although ABA CEO Oren Teicher reiterated that statistic at the panel, the line that brought the largest applause

Diversity An Issue As Annual BookExpo America Convention Opens
May 28, 2014

NEW YORK (AP) - Three years ago, guest speaker Mindy Kaling joked that publishing's annual national convention, BookExpo America, resembled "a high school reunion where all the jocks were killed in a plane crash, and all the minorities, too."

Little seems to have changed.

From Wednesday to Saturday, tens of thousands of publishers, authors, agents and librarians will meet at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York for a convention predominantly organized by whites, spotlighting books predominantly written, edited and published by whites.

London Book Fair 2014: Interview with Kobo President Michael Tamblyn
April 9, 2014

As the dominant player in the e-book game, Amazon gets a lot of headlines, and generates a lot of uneasiness among publishers (as author Anthony Horowitz suggested in his London Book Fair talk). But Amazon is of course not the only game in town. And among its competitors, Kobo rather stands out as the anti-Amazon.

On the floor of the London Book Fair, we caught up Kobo's newly installed president and chief content officer Michael Tamblyn to talk about his promotion, e-books, and of course, the value of partnerships.

The Independent Bookstore Lives
April 7, 2014

Stop carving that gravestone. Brick-and-mortar bookstores aren't dead, yet. On the contrary, independently owned bookstores are growing in number. According to the American Booksellers Association, since hitting a nadir in 2009, the number of indie bookstores in the U.S. has grown 19.3 percent, from 1,651 to 1,971. The current total is less than half the 1990s peak of around 4,000.  But it still serves as a rebuke to the conventional wisdom that equates Amazon's relentless rise with the inevitable death of the physical bookstore.

Author James Patterson Gives $1 Million to Bookstores
February 20, 2014

Independent bookstores, with their paper-thin profit margins and competition from Amazon, have found themselves a Daddy Warbucks.

The best-selling author James Patterson has started a program to give away $1 million of his personal fortune to dozens of bookstores, allowing them to invest in improvements, dole out bonuses to employees and expand literacy outreach programs.