The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association and the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association have officially completed their merger, creating a single regional association covering the entirety of California that is called the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, or CALIBA.
The new association's board includes booksellers from across the state, and a committee of booksellers and publisher reps located throughout California helped oversee the transition. The first official CALIBA events will be a Spring Workshop held in San Diego, Calif., on March 8, followed by a second Spring Workshop slated for March 29 in San Francisco. The Fall Discovery Lab is scheduled to run September 23-25 in South San Francisco, and CALIBA will also host a one-day Fall Workshop in the Los Angeles metro area.
Even before the merger, the two associations were frequent collaborators. In 2011, they fought for tax equalization against online competitors and in 2013 they created California Bookstore Day, which eventually grew into the nationwide Independent Bookstore Day. And starting in 2017, they worked together to produce joint Summer and Fall book catalogues.