Oct

New Initiative Aimed at Furthering Indie Books, Bookstores

The American Booksellers Association unveiled its newest marketing campaign intended to push the sale of indie books this coming holiday season. The campaign, called “Thanks for Shopping Indie,” coincides with American Express’ third annual Small Business Saturday promotion, held on the busiest weekend shopping day of the year, immediately following the Thanksgiving holiday and resulting Black Friday sales.

ABA’s member stores stand to receive incentive pricing on indie titles for their full participation in the program, aimed at encouraging readers to not only purchase indie authors’ works but also to shop in independent bookstores over the holiday. The promotion requires bookshops to stock at least ten titles from a grouping of sixty, including at least one adult title and one children’s title if it fits into the scope of the store; they are also required to create a display near the front of the store that features the program and the titles, as well as feature information on the campaign in their customer networking.

In return for their cooperation in the campaign, indie bookstores will receive special pricing on the titles they feature. The savings the bookshops receive is meant to afford the booksellers the extra money to offer incentives to their customers for purchasing those indie titles.

Both this campaign and the AmEx Small Business Saturday promotions were designed to help independent business owners reach a broader customer base through the offering of special pricing and promotional items. More information on the ABA promotion, which will take place from November 24^th through December 1^st, can be found on the website.

Mercy Pilkington (1087 Posts)

Mercy Pilkington is a young-adult author and a teacher in a correctional facility. She does not have a single textbook in her classroom. With the top-of-the-line technology at her disposal and the low reading ability of many of her students, there’s no need for standard paper texts. Instead she relies on e-readers, iPads, desktop PCs, Polycom video conferencing equipment for virtual field trips, live streaming for science demonstrations, and text-to-speech read-aloud software to teach English and science. Within the next ten years, public school classrooms across the country are going to look a lot more like Mercy’s classroom because the educational possibilities with these kinds of technologies are limitless. Have a question? Send an email to mercypilkington@yahoo.com