To open the Wi14 session "Selling International and Diverse Books: Panel with Bookselling Without Borders Alumni & Organizers," Michael Reynolds of Europa Publications said that publishers of international books want their titles to be more visible in the market, and "we understand that booksellers are an absolutely vital link to make that happen. We want you to be better informed, better connected, more involved in the international book scene; we want to expose you to the sophistication of international publishing. And in this way hopefully you become more effective advocates for our books."
Bookselling Without Borders now comprises a group of 14 independent publishers, "all of them committed to international works of fiction and nonfiction, all kinds of different publishing programs," Reynolds said, adding that this year the program is organizing fellowships to five different book fairs in Frankfurt, Istanbul, Bologna, Turin and Guadalajara, as well as a residency for the first time in India.
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| (l.to r.) Lyn Roberts, Ana Thorn, Christie Henry, Michael Reynolds, David Sandberg, Stephanie Beddington | |
While acknowledging that publisher sponsors may have their own goals for participating in BWB, Christie Henry of Princeton University Press sees this "as part of a much larger initiative to share knowledge and build partnerships and pathways for collaboration.... I think ecosystems, in order to thrive, there needs to be a really routine flow of nutrients and in our ecosystem those nutrients take the form of books, but they also take the form of knowledge. And I think BWB provides some excellent new pathways for that nutrient flow and will be really essential to our future resilience and ongoing evolution."
Two years ago, David Sandberg of Porter Square Books, Cambridge, Mass., attended the Turin Book Fair on a BWB fellowship in the wake of Roxanne Gay's Wi12 keynote, during which she "completely challenged us to say you can't just say that stuff is happening to you. You have to take risks. What are you going to do about it?... And then this opportunity came up and one of the things that was fairly obvious that we could do as booksellers is talk about certain types of books that are more diverse in viewpoint than what we were used to selling and our customers were used to buying.... For me, that trip to Turin came at the perfect time because it was a logical answer to that question of what can we do differently.... It lived up to all my expectations in terms of the extent to which I could come back and not only know about specific individual books and authors, but really be able to think differently about a whole type of literature that I always knew existed but never thought of consciously as something that, in and of itself, was important to promote."
Anna Thorn, formerly of Busboys and Poets, Washington, D.C., now runs Bookstore Vagabond and is the new BWB program coordinator. One of the highlights of her 2018 Turin Book Fair fellowship was the opportunity to share the experience with three other booksellers: "The days were packed and long and we would come home late, and all we wanted to do was to keep talking about everything we were thinking and learning about.... Having those three other brilliant booksellers from different stores across the country and from different perspectives, different roles; having them to constantly give ideas to and hear what they were getting from the experience was huge... and also made me very close with them, which is great for building up a network back home. You can ask questions, you can talk about what you're doing in your stores moving forward to keep the momentum going."
Describing her fellowship at last year's Frankfurt Book Fair as "an amazing experience," Lyn Roberts of Square Books in Oxford, Miss., said, "It changed me and how I sell books and how I view bookselling, but it's very difficult to quantify it. Someone asked on a form what percentage more international books are you selling now, and I don't know. But I do know that we talk about it more and I have more of an appreciation for books internationally and also for this global community of bookselling and the book industry.... We're part of something that's really grand and wonderful and can change the world. People ask about why did you want to do this, and I'm like,'world peace,' which is a very simplistic answer, but I believe in conversations."
Stephanie Beddingfield of Inkwood Books, Tampa, Fla., who attended the 2018 Guadalajara Book Fair, said, "I think just going into this festival and just seeing the countries represented and how many books; it's very humbling. You realize how much you actually don't know at all. The beautiful children's books, illustrators.... But I think that the best thing about it is talking to the other booksellers and sharing information, and talking to other publishers."
When Reynolds asked what they had "brought back" from their BWB experience, Thorn noted: "It only takes one person at a bookstore to really change how a certain genre is sold. You know from eavesdropping on the handselling of all of your co-workers. It has a ripple effect throughout the store. And that was already very visible."