At the annual membership meeting yesterday during the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Tradeshow, taking place this week in Portland, Ore., PNBA president Lane Jacobson (Paulina Springs Books, Sisters, Ore.) set a tone of general optimism while acknowledging setbacks still felt from the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite financial and community impacts still reverberating from the shutdowns in 2020, the successes of the Bookseller Summer School professional development seminars online, summer and holiday catalogs, and a new book award fee structure, as laid out in overview by PNBA executive director Brian Juenemann, have together reinvigorated the organization.
Secretary/treasurer Melissa Demotte (The Well-Read Moose, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho) noted that revenue streams suggest that the association may yet end 2023 by breaking even, after ending 2022 with a roughly $25,000 loss. Providing a more detailed income-and-expense report of the contributing financial figures (available to members on the PNBA website), she noted that they'll update the information once the trade show margins have been calculated.
Membership is the highest it has been since 2010, at 157 now, as the result of a dedicated effort to connect with and follow up with stores that were not yet members.
Speaking in more detail about the book awards' new fee structure, Rosa Hernandez (Third Place Books, Seattle, Wash.) expressed relief that the books being submitted are fewer in number and higher in quality than had been seen previously. Additionally, the fee has created new revenue for a program that had been, up to that point, a financial loss, accepted in part for its capacity to foster goodwill in the industry. The continued engagement of publishers submitting, however, has reinforced that sense of goodwill and reaffirmed the awards' status as a respected, desirable, and important program in the book community.
Members were encouraged to volunteer for the book award committee as well as the education committee, as both programs continue to support the association's mission. No member is too new to take part, vice-president Sarah Hutton (Village Books & Paper Dreams, Bellingham, Wash.) pointed out. These opportunities don't require expertise sometimes as much as they need fresh perspectives.
Near the meeting's end, Jacobson held a vote on recent revisions to the by-laws, which were mostly efforts to clarify changes made in 2021, regarding membership tiers, board vacancies, and advisory roles filled by past members to pass along institutional knowledge. The vote passed. --Dave Wheeler