We arrived late Saturday night so we were not able to attend the Ignite session held earlier that day. However, I was very pleased that the ABA actually created this session with the help of some of the BIPOC booksellers. There were also several Affinity Group sessions that were open to all who wanted to attend. I was inspired by Ocean Vuong's keynote speech which became very emotional when he talked about his journey as a young Vietnamese American writer.  

I was also impressed with the Tuesday keynote From Resistance to Resilience:  The Legacy and Future of Black Owned Bookstores. Being a Black Owned Bookstore, I was especially happy to see the interest and support that the ABA is putting in supporting our businesses. Ms. Janet Jones of Source Books in Detroit was especially inspirational given her history in Detroit as having the oldest Black-owned bookstore in the area. She is truly an inspiration to us all!

Although I enjoyed several sessions that I attended, one being the Policy and Procedures session, I was most excited to meet Kennedy Ryan at the Hachette dinner on Tuesday night and was overjoyed to learn that I would be seated next to her during our dinner. It was a complete joy and honor to meet her and get a chance to just talk.  

I thought it was a great Winter Institute. It is always so good to see old and new faces, and to spend time with fellow like-minded people. The conversations, the get-togethers, and the dinners were all so uplifting. I always feel so energized when getting back home and implementing the things I learned.

Linda-Marie Barrett / Executive Director:
Reading: Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake. I’m a fan of Blake’s sweet and sensitive queer romances and Iris Kelly is a perfect escapist read.
Listening: Enjoying classical string quartet music in the background while working and reading. Very soothing!
Watching: Continuing to drift between the Caribbean (Death in Paradise) and the Carolinas (Sweet Magnolias) for my tv viewing. Also watching spring coming into our mountains in western North Carolina, which is so exciting and comforting!

Candice Huber / Membership:
Reading: PLEASE CANDICE finish just ONE book while on vacation!
Listening: To the peaceful sounds of the ocean from my fancy cabana on the top deck of a (nerd) cruise ship. And Sarah Gailey and John Scalzi talking about writing (in person! on a cruise ship!).
Watching: The vast ocean in front of me while contemplating the depths of its mysteries.

Nicki Leone / Communications:
Reading: Still with The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing (interrupted by spates of actual gardening) and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. And my copy of the Spring edition of Slightly Foxed arrived, which is my de-stress and de-compress reading.
Listening: The audiobook of One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. It's amazing. Also agonizing.
Watching: Back to watching The Pitt. Blood. guts. gore. kindness.

SP Rankin / Website Administrator:
Reading: Mutual Interest, Olivia Wolfgang Smith's expansive, finely honed chronicle of Gilded Age capitalism. Ruthlessly brash queer heroine (anti-heroine) Vivian Lesperance Schmidt and her husband and his husband join forces to build a soap and perfume empire while trying to live on their own terms in rigid, Whartonesque New York City high society.
Listening: I'm still streaming Radio France's "FIP Pop" station which has led to some welcome new additions to my own library, including Lady Blackbird's jazz and soul inflected album Black Acid Soul.
Watching: I mean, sometimes you just want a well-crafted, well-acted TV show with varying amounts of plausibility. OK, zero plausibility. But don't let that keep you from Elsbeth, a Columbo-style howdunnit starring Carrie Preston's relentlessly quirky lawyer character from The Good Wife and a parade of guest stars enjoying themselves. And really don't let it keep you from Matlock, a semi-reboot (I won't spoil the twist) of the original starring Kathy Bates who invests surprisingly powerful emotional stakes where you really don't expect them.

Andrea Richardson / Sales:
Reading: Sarah's Pinborough's upcoming We Live Here Now. It's a spooky, haunted house twisty that I'm really enjoying.
Listening: The wind outside, telling me that it's going to be a very stormy day
Watching: I am impatiently awaiting the next episode of White Lotus. Parker Posey is true magic this season.

Linda-Marie Barrett / Executive Director:
Reading: Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall, a powerful, eye-opening read prompting much reflection. Looking forward to discussing Hood Feminism in my book club next week.
Listening: To "Classical Essentials Mixtape" from Spotify as I fly back from Winter Institute.
Watching: After busy days of meetings and catching up at Winter Institute, I've been winding down while watching Later Daters. This show brings up a lot of thoughts and empathy around the struggles of middle-aged folks entering the dating scene after a divorce or the death of a spouse. And some wonderment about whether several of them are drinking too much on their dates!

Candice Huber / Membership:
Reading: I'm on vacation so fingers crossed that when you hear from me when I get back, I will have finished at least one book instead of just starting five more.
Listening: To the sounds of jaunty music and my own laughter while walking around Disney World.
Watching: People-watching at Disney is one of my favorite things.

Nicki Leone / Communications:
Reading: The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing, Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. Also, The Golden Notebook is once again back on my desk because during our last phone call, Mom said "I'm starting The Golden Notebook. I am distracted by the awful news all the time. I need a deep dive sort of story and this might be it." I will not let Mom deep dive alone!
Listening: Now that the weather is warmer, I have my Merlin app recording everything I didn't even realize I was hearing. On a more agonizing note, I have the audiobook of One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad queued up, after listening to his amazing interview on the Between the Covers podcast.
Watching: MNSP (Movie night with SP) this past weekend was The Illusionist with Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti, which I've seen before but she hadn't. For a murder mystery it is a quiet, beautiful little jewel box of a film that makes one long for life in a sepia-toned Vienna at the turn of the last century. But while I remembered it for its beauty, I was struck fresh by the acting of Norton and especially Giamatti. There is a lot of nuanced dialogue in this movie and a fair amount of it is entirely without words.

SP Rankin / Website Administrator:
Reading: The absolutely gorgeous Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris 1900-1939, which is the companion to the National Portrait Gallery exhibition of the same name which in an amazing bit of synchronicity will be at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens during NVNR.
Écoute: FIP Pop, the pop music streaming channel on the Radio France app. This is not the French version of the Top 40, but about 60 years worth of popular music from around the world. It is completely unpredictable--the last few songs this morning have included Pulp, Serge Gainsbourg, The Smiths, and Beyoncé. No commercials, but a woman will pop in periodically and announce "FIP Pop" in the Frenchest way possible.
Watching: The Illusionist (2006). The plot (a tale of political intrigue, romance, magic, and the supernatural set in Vienna in 1900) is twisty and fun, but the standouts are the meticulous and beautiful production design (which seems mercifully free of CGI) and the pulsing Philip Glass score which evokes everything from Hitchcock to Wagner.

Andrea Richardson / Sales:
Reading: I just finished an early early bound manuscript of a great new book from Ashley Winstead, Future Saints. It's not her usual genre and I loved it!
Listening: The sounds of a snowy day in Richmond ― kids outside on the way to sled at the reservoir, and a lot of silence otherwise.
Watching: The last episode of Cobra Kai and gearing up to start the third season of White Lotus.

Batch for Books announces partnership with Simon and Schuster
Simon and Schuster has joined Batch for Books, marking a major milestone in its mission to simplify invoice and payment management for bookstores and publishers. With this addition, all of the Big Five publishers are now part of the Batch for Books network. Information for booksellers can be found here.

What to do with a box of 500 catalogs if you have a tiny store

One of the most common questions bookstores ask SIBA about the catalog program is for help with ideas on how to use them. SIBA's membership includes pop-up bookstores, mobile bookstores, online-only bookstores, prospective not-quite-open-yet bookstores, and very tiny "one man band" stores with no extra staff, just an enthusiastic owner. A box of 500 catalogs can be a lot to give out as bag stuffers, even over an entire summer.

The Indie Summer Reading Guide is not just a sales tool, it is a marketing tool for your bookstores. Assuming you can hand out 100 catalogs to customers who come into your shop, what can you do with the other 400 in the box? Here are some ideas collected from bookstores that currently participate in the SIBA catalog program:

1. Send one to everyone on your mailing list or who has ordered from you online. (50)
2. Send one as part of a store information packet to your local city council, mayor, county commissioners, or other business community influencers with a letter about the importance of their support for local businesses. (25)
3. Do an exchange with another business near you -- they pass out your catalogs to their customers, you pass out their "free coffee" coupons to yours. (50)
4. If your store does pop-ups, offsite events, or bookmobile routes, seed places on your summer route with catalogs and info to purchase books online from the digital version, or order and pick up when you are in the area. (100)
5. Hand out catalogs to attendees of store events, story times, book club meetings, etc. (100)
6. Bring catalogs to local independent and/or assisted living communities and take orders. (50)
7. Include a catalog in all special order book shipment and/or subscription boxes. (25)

50+25+50+100+100+50+25=400! Success!

Reserve your FREE Indie Summer Reading Guides

The 2025 Love Y'all Romance Book Fest was held in Decatur, Georgia on February 14-16. With over 80 authors and keynote addresses by Sonora Reyes, Julian Winters, Amalie Howard, and Ali Hazelwood, Love Y'all is one of the largest romance-dedicated book festivals in the country. Now in its second year, it is also a festival founded and run by a team of indie booksellers from the Atlanta area. Festival founder Preet Singh of Eagle Eye Books talks about why they decided they needed a Romance book festival:

"I spent two decades traveling the country to meet authors and readers who wrote, read, and loved romance." says Singh, whose bio says she discovered romances when she was 10 and her love for the genre is still going strong. In January 2023, Georgia indie booksellers held a meeting at Read it Again where they all agreed there was a lack of genre fiction events, especially romance, and they decided to do something about it.

"While our primary focus is always to create a safe space for EVERYONE to celebrate romance," notes Singh, "we also wanted to ensure our local community was supported too, with four indie booksellers handling all book sales. We're a diverse group of organizers-PoC, Immigrants, Queer, Allies, Neurospicy, and more. Highlights from 2025 include our opening and closing keynotes, Truth or Dare on Sunday morning, and hearing from authors and attendees they had a wonderful time. It felt like a moment out of time, while the administration makes moves to erase us."

Singh acknowledges that balancing roles of organizer and bookseller is challenging. It means longer hours, both mentally and physically, and is a labor of love. "I am very lucky to have an amazing group of people to organize Love Y'all with," she said. "Vania from Brave + Kind, Hannah (former B+K & Bookish Atlanta bookseller, now a literary agent), and Jo (formerly employed in publishing) and another wonderful group at Eagle Eye who support me and the festival. I have seen the romance community blossom in Atlanta, and it brings me so much joy to see it flourish. Love Y'all will return in 2026."

The winners of the 2025 Southern Book Prize were announced on February 14: Rednecks by Taylor Brown (St. Martin’s Press) in Fiction, The Mango Tree by Annabelle Tometich (Little, Brown and Company) in Nonfiction, and Not Like Other Girls by Meredith Adamo (Bloomsbury YA) in Young Readers. Winning authors receive a donation in their name to the charity or nonprofit of their choice.

Read the full press release

SIBA has created a marketing toolkit including a poster, a flyer, and social media graphics, for booksellers to use in their stores.

As part of its support for the Southern Book Prize, SIBA awards two raffle winners.

Collin Bridges won a $100 gift card to their local bookstore in the Southern Books Prize Social Media Scavenger Hunt. Their bookstore is The Lynx in Gainesville, Florida.

Brooks Jewell is the raffle winner for participating in the Southern Book Prize ballot. They receive a collection of Southern Book Prize finalists. Their SIBA store is The Snail on the Wall in Huntsville, Alabama. "I have always been an avid reader," said Jewell, "there is nothing like a book to bring both joy and solace! Congratulations to this year’s Southern Book Prize winners! I’m so excited to add them to my collection!"

Melissa Taylor has been named a Books Across Borders Spring 2025 RISE Fellow to the RISE Bookselling Conference in Riga, Latvia.

Taylor is a bookseller with over 20 years of industry experience. She is currently the co-owner of E. Shaver, Bookseller which was named Best Bookstore in the South by the readers of Southern Living and is also included in the book 150 Bookstores You Need to Visit Before You Die. She is the cohost of the podcast Pull Your Shelf Together and serves on the finance committee of the Binc Foundation. She also serves as a member of the SIBA Board of Directors. She lives in Savannah with her husband (a former bookseller) and their two rescue dogs.

Read more about the Books Across Borders Mission | Apply for a 2025/2026 Fellowship

SIBA is a sponsor of Books Across Borders, a nonprofit organization that provides booksellers with travel fellowships to international book fairs, in addition to other programs that support the development of global literary community.

Linda-Marie Barrett / Executive Director:
Reading: Just started Birding with Benefits by Sarah T. Dubb, a fun romance sparking between a birder and someone who is ready for new challenges (like birding!). Also reading Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall for my book club. It’s coming with me to Winter Institute.
Listening: To peepers, who will certainly go silent during the next few days of arctic weather, and birds chirping and squabbling at our bear-defying bird feeder.
Watching: Shifting back and forth between the Caribbean and the Carolinas as we alternate viewing Death in Paradise and the newest season of Sweet Magnolias.

Candice Huber / Membership:
Reading: Still reading 12 books at once. Still haven't finished one. But I'm going on a two-week vacation starting next week, so hoping to finish at least one book while in my fancy cabana.
Listening: I finally finished The Lotus Empire! WOO Please email me to discuss if you've read it, because I'd LOVE to talk about it.
Watching: Caught up on Severance season 2 and Traitors season 3. Next up: Squid Game season 2, Silo season 2, Yellowjackets season 3, and White Lotus season 3.

Nicki Leone / Communications:
Reading: The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing, because I can't resist a great garden reclamation story. Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
Listening: The Spotify soundtrack to True Detective: Night Country, which has music by Tanya Tagaq, who wrote Split Tooth. I also have the audiobooks of A Bird in the House and The Fire-Dwellers, both by Margaret Laurence, which keep me company when I'm house cleaning.
Watching: After watching Big Night last week I was tooling around looking at other films with Isabella Rossellini, and came across La Chimera, a magical story that had me dreaming of catacombs and mysterious strings of red yarn. Rossellini in this movie is not "statuesque" (she's mostly in a wheelchair) but she still commands any room and any scene she is in. It's a really lovely film.

SP Rankin / Website Administrator:
Reading: Split Tooth, by Tanya Tagaq. A shattering story that has stayed in my thoughts long after finishing it. Though set at the edge of the Arctic circle during the 1970s, the book weaves time, myth, the supernatural, and uncompromising reality in a fiercely original story. I am honestly not sure what to read next.
Listening: Undercover (2020) by Bronwynne Brent, a new-to-me Mississippi-born singer and songwriter. The unparalleled Brittany Howard, mainly her 2019 debut solo album, Jaime. And it was time to revisit one of my longtime favorite albums from a longtime favorite band: Calexico's Algiers (2012).
Watching: Nicki picked this week's movie, La Chimera, the second movie (Happy as Lazzaro was the first) we've watched from Italian director Alice Rohrwacher. Dreamy and Felliniesque, the movie is set in the 1980s, but feels both medieval and post-apocalyptic as it follows a band of grave robbers in search of Etruscan antiquities. All the good stuff is there--art, beauty, history, myth, mystery, love, death, and great socks (not a typo).

Andrea Richardson / Sales:
Reading: I just finished an early early bound manuscript of a great new book from Ashley Winstead, Future Saints. It's not her usual genre and I loved it!
Listening: The sounds of a snowy day in Richmond - kids outside on the way to sled at the reservoir, and a lot of silence otherwise.
Watching: The last episode of Cobra Kai and gearing up to start White Lotus season 3.

Hello SIBA friends!

Turning Page Bookshop first opened its doors in the small town of Seneca, SC in June 2014 and has since relocated to Goose Creek, SC. The shop offers a welcoming space for literary and communal gatherings and prides itself on promoting local interest and diversity, featuring a wide range of books and gift items suitable for all ages. Additionally, the shop offers a variety of programming to cater to the needs of its diverse clientele. From book clubs and author signings to children's storytime sessions, there is always something happening to engage and inspire visitors of all ages.

According to owner VaLinda Miller, recent experiences in South Carolina over the past couple of years have caused significant challenges for the bookstore. Several socioeconomic factors contribute to the challenges: economic difficulties, including inflation and low wages, and limited discretionary spending make it difficult for families to prioritize book purchases. There is also an ongoing struggle to acknowledge and teach Black history, which affects the diversity and inclusivity of educational content. Efforts to remove books have ramped up, as they have in other places in the South, and just last week, the state’s Board of Education voted to remove several books from the state’s public schools. Bookstores across the South, and the country, are dealing with similar struggles.

While the situation in South Carolina is challenging, Miller said it also presents an opportunity to reassess and explore new avenues for promoting literacy and community engagement. For now, Miller had to close the physical location of Turning Page when their lease ended last year, and they’re operating online and pop-ups until they can find a new location. But they aren’t giving up. Miller said, “I have been fighting all my life as a Black woman, so this is not new, it's just another battle that I will win, again.”

You can follow Turning Page Bookshop at @turningpagebookshop to keep up with their journey and visit their website at https://turningpagebookshop.com/ to support.