A letter from the Executive Director

Beloved SIBA Booksellers,

It is with mixed emotions that I announce my retirement from SIBA coming in June 2020. Serving as SIBA’s Executive Director for the past 30 years has been the honor of my life. I love this organization and will miss working with you. However, it is time for me to move on and time for SIBA to find the next Executive Director who will help yall move into the future.

I am so proud of all we have accomplished together, and I’m so proud of the SIBA team. I am confident I am leaving SIBA in capable hands. SIBA is seen as forward-looking, innovative, and smart – an organization willing to take risks without being risky. I treasure the reputation we have earned. Foremost among our accomplishments has been effective use of the Carver governance model. Our commitment to Carver has given SIBA an edge in terms of our ability to set ambitious priorities and the confidence to implement them.

The SIBA Board is moving ahead by establishing a Search Committee and engaging the services of a professional search consultant. More information will be forthcoming about the search, but I do want you to know that the consultant, Nanette Blandin, will be attending the Discovery Show in Spartanburg and will be available to meet with SIBA members. She will be scheduling meetings on Friday and Saturday to talk with members about SIBA and to hear their views about the priorities for my successor.You can schedule an appointment here.I encourage you to meet with Nanette so that your views are heard and taken into account during the search process.

Some of you may be wondering what I will be doing post retirement. Obviously, I plan to spend a lot of time on the West Coast being a grandmother! Also, I have many ideas for projects that I would love to pursue. In the meantime, I’ll be at SIBA doing whatever I can to ensure a smooth transition.

Thanks to all of you for all that you do.

Wanda Jewell
Executive Director
Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance

What’s a bookseller to do after you’ve registered for the show and purchased your meal tickets? Get cracking on preparing orders to take advantage of exhibitor specials! In our Exhibitor Directory you’ll find all kinds of incentives to bring in books and gifts at special prices and extended dating. Every order you place at the show equals a chance to win our $1000 Buyer’s Raffle. (If you’re the lucky exhibitor with whom the bookseller placed the raffle-winning order, you’ll get a free table at next year’s show.). 

Visit our schedule of events  and figure out what education sessions, EUREKAsiba presentations, and author panels on Friday will bring you the most value for your time. Split up staff and take in as much as you can, leaving time for a restorative visit to our Quiet Room, or impromptu meetings with other booksellers and authors. 

Then look for those special events outside of meal times on Fri/Sat/Sun that will give you a laugh, offer a place to network with other booksellers, publishers, and authors, or a chance to sit down and enjoy a complimentary coffee or adult beverage. 

Friday Highlights include:

• 10-10:30AM: Gold Star Orientation for First-Time Exhibitors

• 11-11:30AM: Gold Star Orientation for First-Time Booksellers

• 5PM: Signaround featuring authors who appeared at Friday’s events

• 6PM: Herstory Comes Alive, the daughters of Jackie Robinson and George Wallace in conversation with Katheryn Russell-Brown

• 7PM: First 180 Days Party featuring authors with books releasing in 2020

• 10PM: Milk & Cookies Pajama Silent Reading Gathering

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Saturday Highlights include:

• 9-10AM: SIBA Annual Meeting and Town Hall

• 10AM: Blackstone Publishing Refreshment Break with author Jill Criswell 

• 3PM: Mercer University Press Meet & Greet & Eat & Drink with MUP authors

• 5:45-6:45PM: Parapalooza, a SRO event with numerous authors and many laughs!

• 9PM: Hub City Celebration at the Montgomery Building. Don’t miss this one!

Sunday Highlights include:

• 9AM: BQB Publishing Serves It Up with refreshments

• 11:30AM: Play Heads or Tails with the Binc Foundation to win a $500 gift card

• 11:45AM: Buyers Raffle for $1000

• 10-4PM: Bookseller Shipping Center open 

SIBA promotes six new books every month to consumers in our Lady Banks Bookshelf promotion. These titles appear at the top of our weekly Lady Banks Commonplace Book newsletter, which has a circulation of over 60k.  We also feature them above the fold on the homepage of Authors ‘Round the South and on the cover image of the ARTS Facebook page with buy links promoted to our 15,000 Facebook friends. A different member store is featured with the titles every week.

By promoting through Lady Banks, publishers are making an investment in SIBA member bookstores’ attention and market. SIBA works with them to select titles customers are looking for, and then we drive those customers to SIBA member stores.  Booksellers can boost sales by bringing in Lady Banks Bookshelf titles before the month begins, and putting up a winning display. Send in a photo of your display and earn 20 B3! points, too!

September Titles:

Monarchs Under the Sassafras Tree by Lillah Lawson

Eastbound from Flagstaff by Annette Valentine

Crescendo by Allen Cheney & Julie Cantrell

Southern Son by Victoria Wilcox

Everywhere She's Not by N. John Shore, Jr.

She Rode a Harley by Mary Jane Black

Edelweiss collection

Link to Everywhere She’s Not on IndieBound

Link to Monarchs under the Sassafras Tree on IndieBound

SIBA and participating publishers are giving away the galleys and other materials below to southern indie booksellers on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you are interested simply email the publisher to request a copy. Supplies are limited, so act quickly!

Liked what you read? Let everyone know!

• Okra Pick Nomination | Southern Book Prize Nomination | IndieNext Nomination | Edelweiss Review

N.B. These are review copies only, and not for resale.

Eat. Sleep. Read. Southern.

Holding On To Nothing by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne

Blair / October 22, 2019 / $25.95 / Hardcover / 9781949467086

“Shelburne’s stunning debut novel is a long trip into small-town Tennessee…riveting, touching, heart-wrenching, tragic, and beautiful.”—Booklist

“Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne writes with extraordinary love and compassion of the lives of her flawed characters; she shines a clear, calm light on their tragedies, their joys, and their hard-won redemptions.”—Lauren Groff, Florida and Fates and Furies

Lucy Kilgore has her bags packed for her escape from her rural Tennessee upbringing, but a drunken mistake forever tethers her to the town and one of its least-admired residents, Jeptha Taylor, who becomes the father of her child. Together, these two young people work to form a family, though neither has any idea how to accomplish that, and the odds are against them in a place with little to offer other than bluegrass music, tobacco fields, and a Walmart full of beer and firearms for the hunting season. Their path is harrowing, but Lucy and Jeptha are characters to love, and readers will root for their success in a novel so riveting that no one will want to turn out the light until they know whether this family will survive.

In luminous prose, debut novelist Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne brings us a present-day Appalachian story in the tradition of Lee Smith, Silas House, and Ron Rash, cast without sentiment or cliché, but with a genuine and profound understanding of the place and its people.

“A book you literally cannot put down.”—Lee Smith, Dimestore and The Last Girls

“Holding On To Nothing is a gem.”—Ron Rash, Serena

To Request a Review Copy: publicity@blairpub.com

Here’s a day full of reasons to come early and enjoy Thursday with your SIBA friends.

1:30-3:00PM: Chapman Cultural Center Tour and Cider Tasting & Brewery Tour  

Experience Spartanburg culture at the Chapman Cultural Center located at 200 East St. John Street. The tour includes a spin through the Spartanburg Art Museum, Spartanburg Science Center, and Spartanburg County Historical Association Museum followed by a visit across the street to Ciclops Cideri & Brewery, 197 East St. John Street. This is a 7 minute walk from the Marriott Spartanburg.

3:30-5:00PM: “Sunday Drive” to the Glendale Ruins. (RSVP required)
Join Tom Poland, best-selling author of The Last Sunday Drive: Vanishing Traditions in Georgia and the Carolinas (Arcadia Publishing). Board the bus at the Marriott at 3:30 for a short drive to the site of an old mill near the community of Glendale, while Tom treats us to some tales of its long history. Note on accessibility: The tour path includes gravel areas and moderate walking through woods, distance a little over a mile. Generously sponsored by Arcadia Publishing’s YourTown program.

5:00-7:00PM: Gallery Talk and Wine-and Cheese Reception

Private gallery opening of the new exhibit Cut and Paste, featuring collage works from The Johnson Collection, 154 West Main Street. This is an 11 minute walk from the Marriott Spartanburg. The gallery talk will be immediately followed by a complimentary wine-and-cheese reception at Hub City Bookshop, 186 West Main Street, two blocks north of the gallery.

9PM: Join us in Heritage Foyer D & F for TrioLive, a magical blend of music, storytelling, and art. This is a unique and moving experience you will not want to miss. Check out our schedule of events for the line-up of Trio performers.

It’s that time again to pick the bookseller leaders that will move SIBA forward. It is time to vote for your SIBA Board.

SIBA’s Board Members are a hard‐working bunch. As all of you have full-time jobs, stores to run, employees to hire, train, oversee, and sadly, fire, not to mention your community outreach efforts that often mean being involved in business associations, chambers of commerce, boards, and other volunteer efforts while never forgetting your unending efforts to retain and grow customers, it is imperative that you elect bookseller members to represent your interests in SIBA.  These booksellers commit to being trained in the effective, expensive, in-depth Carver Training required to oversee all SIBA decisions, and spend over 100 hours annually in this work for you. 

Please take a moment to help SIBA be the best organization it can for you--click on the link below to cast your vote for the bookseller you would like to fill the open seat.

The Ballot:

• Kimberley Daniels Taws, The Country Bookshop, Southern Pines, NC
• John Cavalier, Cavalier House Books, Denham Springs, LA

The ballot will close on August 31, 2019. Every SIBA member store gets one vote. You store membership must be current. Stores receive 50 B3! points for voting.

VOTE HERE | JOIN/RENEW

SIBA ala Facebook Wants to Connect With You.

1. Like this page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SouthernIndependentBooksellersAlliance/
2. This closed Facebook page is for SIBA's Bookstore members: https://www.facebook.com/groups/205172186875708/
3. Visit this event and indicate your interest: https://www.facebook.com/events/473566149807380/?active_tab=discussion

Know that we'll be posting content to these regularly and hope that you will comment, share and post the content along. 

Mark your calendars for Wed, October 16 at 2pm EST, to hear from four booksellers whose bookstores offer a profitable blend of new and used books. With higher profit margins and unique inventory possibilities, adding used and antiquarian books into your mix could be a way to bring in new customers, further meet the needs of existing ones, and improve your cash flow. And it can be fun! Highlighting used and collectible books on social media offers creative opportunities to share unusual jacket designs, hilariously dated subject matter, and ephemera left from a book’s previous owner. Unsaleable used inventory can be turned into journals, buttons, and literary confetti, as Underground Books has done so successfully. Join us to listen to four approaches to selling used books, and blending them into your new book inventory. Please rsvp lindamarie@sibaweb.com to attend.

More about our Presenters:

Cathy Graham is co-owner (with Serena Wyckoff) of Copperfish Books in Punta Gorda, FL. They started their bookselling business 15 years ago in the garage, selling used books online. Now they have a full-service shop – almost 7 years open – and most of the books they sell are new.  Cathy’s background includes teaching high school, the US Air Force, a couple of corporate sales jobs, and a Benedictine monastery. She grew up in Orlando, spent many years in Maryland, and a few in Costa Rica. Besides reading, she enjoys cooking, music, wine, cats and goats (although she doesn't have any goats at the moment).

Shane Gottwals was born and raised in Macon, GA, attending Central Fellowship Christian Academy from kindergarten until graduation. He has a B.A. in English from Mercer University, spending a portion of his college years at Oxford University in England. He met his wife, Abbey, at Mercer University. They have four children and live in Warner Robins, GA. The couple opened Gottwals Books in 2007. Shane has extensive retail experience which has helped Gottwals Books (franchising nationwide as "Walls of Books") become one of the largest used/new bookstore chains in the United States. He currently serves on the boards of Covenant Care Adoption Services, Robins Regional Chamber of Commerce, Central Fellowship Christian Academy, and Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.

Frank Reiss has been buying, selling and trading used, out-of-print and collectible books for over 35 years, first at Acorn Books in San Francisco and, since 1989, as the founder and owner of A Cappella Books in Atlanta, which has earned Hall-of-Fame status from "Atlanta Magazine" and is annually selected in "Creative Loafing's" "Best of Atlanta" issue. In the 1990s Frank served as president of the Georgia Antiquarian Booksellers Association. Since then A Cappella has focused more on new books and contemporary touring author signings, but carefully selected older books continue to shape the store's unique inventory.

Josh Niesse is the co-owner of two independent brick & mortar bookstores in west Georgia. Underground Books, opened in 2011, is an 1800 square foot bookstore that is literally underground, a few steps below street level off of the historic town square in Carrollton, Georgia, home of the University of West Georgia. Underground Books is primarily used & antiquarian, with about 20% new books. Hills & Hamlets Bookshop is a 600 square foot bookstore, dealing in about 80% new books, opened in 2016 in the progressive planned eco-community of Serenbe.  Niesse co-owns both stores with his wife and fellow bookseller Megan Bell. Niesse has a bachelor's degree in philosophy and worked as a literacy tutor and bartender before becoming a bookseller. 

Submitted this week on Edelweiss+ . Thanks to Avid Bookshop, Bookmarks, Bookmiser, Books & Books, Copperfish Books, E.Shaver, booksellers, Fiction Addiction, Flyleaf Books, Fountain Bookstore, Malaprop's, Midtown Reader, MoonPie General Store, Novel., Oxford Exchange, Page 158 Books, Parnassus, Read It Again, Reading Rock, Square Books, Story on the Square, Sundog, Sunrise Bookshop, The Booksmith, The Country Bookshop, and The Little Bookshop.

9780062229212 Butterfly Yellow 9/3/2019
"...explores the immigration experience from an intimate point of view...deft, dazzling, and necessary book for our times.." -- Hannah DeCamp, Avid Bookshop, Athens, GA

9781948908344 Refugia 9/4/2019
"an absolute work of art. I'm blown away by the crisp imagery, the powerful messages, and the austere simplicity of the poetry."-- Lizy Coale, Copperfish Books , Punta Gorda, FL

9780316421997 The Ten Thousand Doors of January 9/10/2019
"I am such a sucker for a portal fantasy, so picking up this book was a no-brainer. I didn't realize I'd also get a book-within-a-book AND a girl-and-her-pet love story!" -- Amber Brown, Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, NC

9780062958464 Don't You Forget About Me 9/10/2019
"This book was not what I had expected going in, but I loved what it turned out to be!" -- Emily Knosher, Read It Again, Suwanee, GA

9781534445420 SLAY 9/24/2019
"Brittney Morris does an incredible job of enveloping the reader into another world. In SLAY, Kiera Johnson created a VR world filled with acceptance, pride and best of all duels." -- Angie Tally, The Country Bookshop, Southern Pines, NC

9781492679011 Motherhood So White 9/24/2019
"I was pulled into Ms. Austin's life from the beginning and found myself wanting to visit with her over coffee to discuss each chapter! -- Tricia Nociti, Reading Rock Books, Dickinson, TN

More bookseller reviews

If your store does not have an Edelweiss+ account and need help setting one up, contact Linda-Marie

On Wednesday, August 14 at 2PM EST, SIBA is hosting “Small Presses Present Fall & Winter Lists” as part of our Publisher Picks: Best Bets for SIBA Booksellers series.  In this bi-monthly series, publishers, editors, marketing directors, and reps present their favorite frontlist titles via Zoom to booksellers. Besides forging important connections with publishers and their reps, attending booksellers will discover new titles to add to their store shelves and earn 10 B3! points. The following industry folks will present: Jacqueline Jarik of Agate Publishing, Ellen Zielinski Whitfield of JKS Communications, Jon Sealy of Haywire Press, Steve McCondichie of Southern Fried Karma, and Nanci McCloskey of Tin House Books. Please rsvp lindamarie@sibaweb.com to attend. 

More info on our presenters:

Jacqueline Jarik is the Associate Manager of Publicity at Agate Publishing where she oversees the publicity campaigns and event planning for all titles across Agate’s four main imprints: Bolden Books, Midway Books, Surrey Books, and B2 Books. She has been employed by Agate since 2015 in a variety of publicity roles. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and she lives in Chicago, IL.

Ellen Zielinski Whitfield is a Senior Publicist with JKS Communications, a literary publicity firm that has represented many southern authors and SIBA award-winning books over the past two decades. Before joining the JKS team, Ellen worked at The Dallas Morning News, The Advocate newspapers of Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Waco Tribune Herald and others. She’s also a popular Bookstagrammer, an avid bibliophile living in Louisiana with her newspaper-executive husband, bright-and-spirited daughter, and an ever-growing collection of 550 books.

Jon Sealy is a Richmond, Virginia-based author and newly minted publisher. His first novel, The Whiskey Baron, was published by Hub City Press in 2014 to high acclaim. This year, he launched a small publishing house, Haywire Books, which is dedicated to making sense of a chaotic world. Titles in his catalog include his own The Edge of America (current Okra Pick, pubs Sept. 10), Patricia Henley's Hummingbird House (20th anniversary reprint, Nov. 5), Mark Powell's Firebird (Jan. 7), and Heather Bell Adams's The Good Luck Stone (Summer 2020)

Steve McCondichie is co-founder of Southern Fried Karma, an Atlanta-based multimedia company and the managing partner, overseeing the operation of their independent publishing imprints, their online literary magazine, the retail bookstore, and their film development company.  Steve and Southern Fried Karma are intent on bringing civil, social discourse to the communities they serve by sharing thoughtful, well-written stories that allow for critical reflection and freethinking.  

Nanci McCloskey is the Sales & Marketing Director of  Tin House Books and based, like the press, in Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her two little boys. Tin House Books is an independent press that publishes roughly a dozen titles a year, and its authors have garnered attention from The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and O, the Oprah magazine.