Havent changed in the book world over the past 20 years. Many things have changed. But im also very pleased to say that one constant over the past couple decades is the Media Presence of john mutter, cofounder and ed or to have in chief of the brilliant daily newsletter, shelf awareness. He was also the longtime editor at Publishers Weekly and the former e newsletter. Go to the web site, www. Shelfawareness. Com. Without further ado, ill turn the stage other to john who will introduce this panel of wonderful and talented booksellers who i know will offer you brilliant insight into the everchanging Book Business. Of john . [applause] thank you, gene. I dont think ive ever been called a constant. Thank you. [laughter] welcome to the independent bookselling panel. I want to start off by saying anything you take away from this session, it should be that contrary to current perceived wisdom, one independent bookseller stores are not dying and are not going the way of the dinosaur and, two, ebooks are not taking over the book world and wont replace all printed books. To put that more positively, while independent bookstores went through a difficult period in the 90s and the fist decade of this the first decade of this century, theyre doing much better now. During this hour i hope youll get a sense of all the dynamic, positive things that are happening and the continuing challenges that booksellers face, and its helped make many of them even better booksellers than they are already. First a quick overview, then ill introduce our panelists who represent a nice range in the business. We have a relatively new bookseller, a veteran bookseller and a sales rep who sells to bookstores, and theyre all really smart and very nice. Each of the panelists will talk a moment about an issue of particular importance to them, then well have a general conversation about some key issues. And if we have time at the end, well have questions and answers. Of course, youve all heard the bad news about bookselling that dean referred to. The general media narrative is stuck on several things that are east not the whole story or are out of date. Major elements focus on the borders collapse two years ago, fears of something similar happening to barnes noble, digital books and amazon taking over the book world, ebooks replacing printed books completely and indies dying out. But this isnt the way a lot of us see things. Theres a lot of good news about independent bookselling. Sales are up, many stores had their best year ever last year, and sales continue to be strong this year. Quite a few indies are opening branches, and, in fact, in shelf awareness on friday we had three separate stories about independent bookstores either having just opened or are going to open a branch. The new stores are popping up again at a healthy rate, and they tend to be run by people who are very well prepared and businessorient inside contrast to a few decades ago. Stores with owners wanting to retire are no longer closing, instead theyre finding buyers who have been able to take over the reins and improve the stores. And one excellent example close to home is politics prose. After a long period of decline, membership in the American Booksellers Association the main trade association of ip competent bookstores independent bookstores, has increased the last several years. Rather than replacing printed weeks, ebooks are starting to look like they will be a variation of format for books, particularly popular with some genres like fiction but not others. And studies and anecdotal evidence are finding that a hybrid model is developing with many people reading both printed and ebooks depending on the type of book, where they are and other factors. And some people are even returning to printed books after trying ebooks which is what happened with me. Also the rate of sales books for ebooks is leveling off from the somewhat stratospheric levels of a year or two ago. At the same time, many indies are now able to compete in the digital arena by selling ebooks and other products in the new aba partnership with cobo which ive heard referred to as the most famous ebook retailer that youve never heard of. Theyre very big outside of the united states, and hopefully theyll be bigger here now. Another issue is sales tax fairness. This involves requiring large internet retailers to collect sales tax, something all brick and Mortar Stores do but most interbe Net Companies have arided avoided which gives them a competitive advantage with consumers. A federal bill requiring sales tax collection by large internet sellers has just passed the senate. And if it makes it through the house, president obama has said that hell sign it. In the meantime, quite a few states have either passed similar laws or have made deals with amazon or other internet sellers to collect sales tax. The buy local movement has begun to influence consumers. On a national level, the aba has worked with Interested National groups. At the local level, many indie bookstores are partnering with other retailers to promote an awareness of the importance of locallyowned businesses through joint advertising, publicity and events. In a related trend, many indeed have become even more important in their communities. Theyre making a very conscious effort to partner with schools, nonprofits, religious groups, Community Groups and more. What is called discover ability has become a major issue in publisher and bookselling. Most people who go online find its really easy to find a book if you know what you want the buy in advance, but its not a great place to find new books. Bricks and mortar bookstores remain one of the key places consumers learn about new books, and indies are particularly good at this. With the collapse of borders and the growth of sales on line, the role of indies in helping consumers discover books has become ever more important. Having weathered so much, indie booksellers are Better Business people, and some have branched out into publishing, printing, joint ventures, doing more and more offsite events, and both books and books and politics prose are great examples of this. So on to the panelists. Want to start with chris kerr who has worked in bookselling in Book Publishing for 37 years. For roughly the first half of that period, he held sales and Marketing Management positions with Oxford University press, blackwell publishing, little brown, Houghton Mifflin and walden books. He founded a group that sells scholarly books to bookstores in the northeast. Spent a lot of his time on the road. Ive known chris for way too many years and can attest that under the stereotypical cynical, gruff sales rep exterior is a cynical, you have sales rep gruff sales rep but with a heart of gold. [laughter] im counting on him to give a reality check from time to time, and if he can take a few minutes and talk about how sausages are made in the Book Business. [laughter] first, just a big shout out to city of gaithersburg. It says a lot about your community that you can organize this. I think logistics would be impossible without the full support of your municipal government, and i go to a lot of these affairs, and im just so impressed by the level of detail and, you know, the congeniality and also the support for authors and, you know, thank you very much. I graduated from high school in this area, in arlington. Im going to my 48th reunion tonight. The school is being razed on its 60th anniversary to be replaced by a new school. But, you know, when i grew up here, there was no beltway. Tysons corner was a gas station and a flashing light. And my high school was the subject of the Largest School integration case the country had ever seen when the county was forced by the courts to close the black high school in south arlington. So, you know, after i came back from the army and finished college, i got my first sales rep job here. So i just always feel very lucky to be able to come back to the washington area, especially because its always just been such a terrific, congenial bookselling community. In very broad fashion, i want to just hit three themes, one which is Survival Strategies that are keeping independent bookstores going today, and many of them thriving. Some of the new booksellers out there who are making it really, really exciting, more exciting than i can ever remember, and, you know, some of the opportunities i think that are out there for retail booksellers , you know, when i started selling in the mid 70s, there werent that many real bookstores. Most were hybrids; book in card, one case book in pets, you know, a lot of them sold religious articles. You know, it was a much smaller footprint than it is now. And, in fact, when i moved to the washington area, you know, i got my books from the basement of woodward and lothrop. And when i went in as a High School Student having taken the bus in from the burbs to look for a george ken nonbook, they were very embarrassed they didnt have it, but they did not mind calling the book shop in georgetown, gave me directions on how to take the crosstown bus. And for those of you who remember, it was really one of the most extraordinary bookstore experiences you could have. It was a house that had once seen much, much better days. Every nook and cranny was jammed with books. It was inconceivable to me that you could walk in the front door, and the delivery room was entirely history and biography. The paperbacks ringed all the stairwells into the back room, you know, cookbooks had their own room. It was really a bit of a revelation. Today were seeing a lot of stores looking backwards at those hybrid models for businesses that they can bolt on largely to extend the possibilities that they could offer to people who are already inclined to be there. And, you know, im just going to mention a few of my favorites. A book shop in manhattan on 14th street right off of the square, if you walk into the store, its basically the size of this room, maybe a little skinnier. There are at any one time a half dozen instructors working oneonone or with small groups of people, students theyve brought to the store courses on meditation, relaxation techniques. With them they bring their book requirements which the store supports, you know, the store sells a lot of sort of support material from yoga mats. The store uses its teachers and its partners to push its message out in the community, and as a result of it, theyve had some pretty interesting offers. Theyre going to open another branch in manhattan very soon. Theyve been offered starter money to create a satellite store in palo alto. Theyre a little wary about the 3,000mile commute. But its a really wonderful example of a store with, you know, an organizing theme, a small footprint really extending itself into the community quite well. Bank street bookstore in mystic, connecticut, if youve ever been to, its quite wonderful. They have now partnered with local Movie Theater, the most popular restaurant, the library to bundle events. Your ticket gets you a meal, an evening with an author. The Movie Theater live stream dan browns appearance at Lincoln Center this last week, and the went fit of the benefit is its cash in the till, its customers who might not ordinarily have walked into the store, and its a chance to sell books at each of these offsite opportunities. Theres some clever real estate deals being made out there, and real estate is really one of the issues that doesnt get talked a lot about in the business because, you know, the owner dies, his kids take over. They want to monetize what they feel is the, you know, family heirloom and suddenly rent goes through the roof. But when the borders bookstore chain collapsed, a lot of mall owners were stuck with really tough propositioning. It turned out that, of course, borders was considered an anchor store. The lease agreements with all the other tenants required that they be rebated if one of the anchor stores went out. So they were really committed to keeping this bookstore going no matter what it called itself or how it operated. And they reached out to a number of indidnt booksellers to come in and, basically, provide a Management Team with operational expertise in exthing for which the exchange for which the mall financed the store, you know, covered the rent, financed the inventory. And while its a fairly recent experience, i think there are lots of opportunities like that, you know, with realtors to be much more creative about their partnership not just rent collectors and people who dont show up to clean the drains. This real estate can cut both ways. I dont know if any of you are familiar with st. Marks book shop in manhattan. Personally, one of my favorite stores. Bob and terry have been friends for 30 years. They were recruited by cooper union to be the lead retail presence in a building that they wanted to put right there at the astroplace subway stop. And the Community Board would not approve the building unless st. Marks was part of it. Fast forward, the building is up, the university now has jacked the rent up to the roof, theyre pushing st. Marks out. Its a really naked betrayal. You know, the university has not really been called out on in. So, you know, while i want to tout the possibilities with working creatively with realtors, i think st. Marks experiences is something of a cautionary tale. One of the fun things to talk about is, you know, espresso book machine. Really the great thing about these machines is that every store has had a completely different experience with it. Harvard bookstore, when i queued up for my first reprint i mean, i had to have something come off this machine you know, the person many front of me was reprinting a 19th century irish textbook on crop rotation. The person in front of him had reprinted a medieval manuscript in the public domain. I mean, to me, it was just one of the great astonishments. Mcnally jackson in new york city has actually created store bestsellers off its machine. You know, the whole zip code is stinky with poets, writers and novelists. But some of their, some of their printings have sold 3400 copies, and they guarantee the people who print with them display space in the store. Its not a luxury that a lot of people have, but its just turned out to be the whole new revenue stream, its really extended the stores message. The other thing about mcnally and jackson is that its an example of a bookstore that can actually change the real estate picture. They opened in what could only politely be described as a drug shooting alley, you know . It was more heroin addicts than, you know, shoppers. People could not wait to tell sarah how crazy she was. And yet, you know, fast forward a year later, she had transformed the neighborhood. The store was a magnet. All the real estate around her had changed, you know . It was really quite magical. And for a cynical new yorker, it was quite a revelation. One of the great things about bookstores, liz and brad are a wonderful addition. Everybody did a huge sigh of relief when they bought the store. Politics prose helped put me in business when i announced i was going to start my business. Theres a lot of pushback from people. A, they were going to step up for us, we could use them as references and, people just better shut up and cooperate. And, you know, it really helped. We jumpstarted very nyse. Sarah mcnally, whom i mentioned, this womans a rock star. I mean, shes really impressive. Veteran bookseller from canada, but she is actually drawn to her community. You cant work there unless youve got a book in progress. You know . Everybody there is doing three Different Things outside the store and on the staff, and it just makes for an incredibly rich environment. Christine at words in green point, the folks who opened green light bookstore, huge twoyear Fundraising Campaign involved the borough president , involved, you know, the community, developed a huge measure of support. I mean, this is the sort of leadership thats arriving these days. I want to very quickly say that there are some continuing threats. I think the biggest problem for independent retailers and retailers of any kind is a lack of access to money. The banks rolled up everybodys lines of credit when the Real Estate Market imploded. You know, people have been punctilious about paying their notes, suddenly couldnt get their inventory financed. It didnt help that publishers lowered the boom on stores demanding earlier payment of more. I think we talked about predatory real estate, a lot of real estate being jacked up beyond reason. You know, changes in technology, you know, these folks can talk about it a little bit better. And then the internet. I dont think anybody realizes that the internet retailers got an 11. 5 billion gift from state and local governments last year. And theyre using that 11. 5 billion last year to club main street retailers over the head with discounts, free freight, predatory pricing. When you look at amazons balance sheet, you know, its a great stock. I bought ten shares for 6, you know, i feel like a genius. But they dont make any money on their transactions. The only real revenue is commissions on thirdparty transactions. Not the stuff they warehouse and ship themselves. And, you know, shareholders can strip off 200 billion in value from apple when they miss their sales target by 5 . I think when the bubble bursts on amazon, its going to be much, much louder. Big opportunities out there, english language remains the biggest export commodity in the world. There are more people learning english at any one time than currently speak english. Within our lifetime there will be more English Speakers in china than there are in the united states. Stores who recognize that there are a lot of new americans out there, there are a lot of kids who are in remediation, you know, who have extended their graphic novels. Theyre doing a lot of really great stuff. And then common core which is the educational standard maryland adopted in 2011, implemented in the 20132014 school cycle, this mandates that more nonfiction be read by kids earlier. I think by Junior High School in maryland the mix will be 50 clash 50. That 50 50. That nonfiction is on the shelves of bookstores. Its been be publish