Welcome to this month's edition of Shelf Awareness Extra!, focusing on the regional booksellers association fall shows, which begin with New Voices New Rooms this coming Sunday, August 2. As always, the shows are lively events where booksellers, publishers, and authors mix easily and learn about upcoming books, industry trends, bookselling basics, etc. Among highlights this year are timely education sessions on book bannings, community connections, AI, dealing with harassment, retaining sanity, how to improve profitability, and much, much more.
All the shows will hold fundraisers for the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) that will vary and include heads or tails games as well as silent auctions and more. Attendees are urged to participate so that Binc can continue its great work helping booksellers and bookstores in need.
Representatives of the American Booksellers Association will attend the shows, and, as is tradition, the ABA will conduct education sessions at them. The association will present "Building a Bookstore Budget" at most of the shows--designed for everyone from new bookstore owners and managers to veteran booksellers looking to revise their current budget. The sessions will help attendees understand the fundamentals of a bookstore budget and explore how ABACUS, the ABA's financial benchmarking survey, can be used to help plan and build budget targets.
And now, on with the shows!