NVNR: 'Really Great and Really Positive'
New Voices New Rooms concluded yesterday in Atlanta, Ga., with a movable feast breakfast, bookseller retreats, and a guided tour of the wholesale trade center AmericasMart. All told, the conference welcomed 330 booksellers, 129 exhibitor personnel, and 90 authors.
Linda-Marie Barrett, executive director of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, noted that roughly one-third of the bookseller attendees were new to NVNR, and it was the "largest attendance for the SIBA contingent in years." Despite a "somber opening" with Monday's breakfast keynote about people affected by book bans, the show's energy 'has been really great and really positive," she said.
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Linda-Marie Barrett and Eileen Dengler |
For this year's show, NVNR made "a lot of effort to bring in small presses," and it hosted more authors than it ever has, Barrett said. She was particularly pleased with the range of authors at the show, from debut writers to veterans. Reflecting on the fifth year of the New Voices New Rooms partnership, Barrett said it now operates like a "well-oiled machine," and they continue to refine their approach to the show every year.
She added that both SIBA and NAIBA have had "huge growth" in membership in recent years, and seeing so many new booksellers at the show during a time of political and economic uncertainty was very encouraging and evidence of a great deal of optimism in bookselling.
Eileen Dengler, executive director of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association, said she saw a lot of positivity from booksellers and was glad to see not only so many first-time attendees but also a lot of "nice cross-pollination" between SIBA and NAIBA booksellers. She noted that NVNR took a different approach to the way it organized its educational tracks this year. There were more sessions devoted to children's bookselling, and there were new tracks on profitability, with sessions related to things like turns and KPIs, and therapist-moderated sessions about mental health.
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NVNR featured several "Ask Me Anything" stations, where experienced booksellers fielded questions on everything from buying strategies, used books, and bookstore models to TikTok. Here, Doug Robinson (Eagle Eye Book Shop, Decatur, Ga.) and Christine Patrick (Winchester Book Gallery, Winchester, Va.) talked about best practices for returns. |
Dengler has led NAIBA since 1999 and announced earlier this summer that she'd be retiring at the end of 2026. When she first made the decision to retire, Dengler reflected, she felt "a lot of heavy feelings about it," but she knew it was the right decision. Then when she had to tell the NAIBA board about it, "that was emotional" too. This show was not her last but, when she attends next year, she'll be training her replacement. Her focus now, she said, is not on the fact that she's leaving but on the fact that she'll be setting up NAIBA's next executive director for success. "I love to train people, I love to share what I know," Dengler said. She wants to make sure that when she retires next year, NAIBA's new leader "has all the answers they need." --Alex Mutter