MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
November 16 – November 23, 2006 Edition

Indy Booksellers’

Take to Airways

To Boost Book Sales

WESTBURY, NY/11/15/06—The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) and seven other regional U.S. bookseller associations are working with the Public Radio Partnership in Louisville, KY on the public radio show Spoken Word. The show is expanding recording sessions in stores throughout the country and two NAIBA members are mentioned each week.

The Spoken Word is a one-hour weekly public radio series featuring talks and performances about literature, the arts, and our culture recorded at independent booksellers throughout the country. It focuses on the authors, the novelists, poets, biographers, journalists, historians and humorists who have been captured talking about, and reading from their work since the program’s inception in 2001. The series is produced by the non-profit Public Radio Partnership in Louisville, Kentucky. The Spoken Word was syndicated in October of 2003 and now airs on public radio stations around the US.

NAIBA encourages its members to alert The Spoken Word to author appearances, give the show a list of public radio stations in their listening areas, and tell their local public radio station about The Spoken Word.

The radio move is part of several initiatives launched by NAIBA to sell more books. The organization also plans to rename its fall 2007 regional trade show “The Booksellers Sales Conference,” to emphasize to publishers that independent booksellers are part of their sales team. The group wants publishers to show booksellers how to sell selected titles and why. In the past the show has been oriented toward order taking rather than on hand selling potentially strong titles.

NAIBA Board President Joe Drabyak, who works for Chester County Book Company in West Chester, Penn, has been known to offer customers a money-back guarantee for a book he recommends. Apparently the strategy is paying off. According to an item in Publisher’s Weekly (Nov. 14, 2006), Drabyak has personally sold 4,000 copies of William Lashner’s Hostile Witness backed by the guarantee.