NAIBA, DAY 2

WOW! Day is a little half over and there's a bunch to blog about!

It started with a moderated chat with the owners of Talking Leaves Books in Buffalo and Creekside Books in the Finger Lakes region. A nice session where we got to here from owners of two very different stores.. took lots of notes. Then publisher reps came in and went over their "picks" for fall and winter sales. Todd went to the kids one and I heard about tons of cool adult books (not THAT kind of adult book!) Lots of great books coming just in time for Christmas and Hanukkah shopping!!! (We'll have them at the store and on the website shortly).

Lunch was what they call a "Movable Feast". They have about 20 authors, and for each course you have a different author come sit at your table, and chat about their books, etc. We had a new author, Carolyn Baugh, whom I would LOVE to spend a whole meal talking with. She went to Cairo as an exchange student in 1992, and has since written a book about women in Egypt. It's fiction, but its based on the women she met while living there. She has also married and Egyptian and converted to Islam... so you can see my loving of her already! Our second author was Carl Capotoro, aka "Little Paulie" from the Sopranos (YES, REALLY!). He's written a memoir of his life growing up in the 60's & 70's with a very unique Italian-American father. It sounds like a really great read if you like quirky and true characters. He was a charmer and, of course, shared stories about life on the small screen. Our third author, whom we didn't get nearly enough time with was Pulitzer Prize winner Oscar Hijuelos. He's got a new YA book out that is a modern day Huck Finn, with a Latino-Irish boy at it's center. It's the debut of a new line of books being published for and about modern Latino youth.

After lunch we had another educational session. This one was about doing a store self audit.... I took about 15 pages of notes... needless to say, the next time you see our little "baby" it may well be very very different. (but change is good!)

Todd is down now for another educational session about IndieBound. Which I've blogged about before (see below). Later they open up the expo and we get to start collecting more and more "swag" and meet more authors.

I just have to say I LOVE ABA & NAIBA! Todd and I come back from these things with so much hope for our little store, that low sales can't get us down (at least for a few weeks). We've already started in a new direction for the store with the off site events we've added this year, and feel good because a lot of talk today has been about the importance of those types of things.

Off to head downstairs for the evening activities.. will blog more later :)