First Canadian Booksellers Association Meeting Wins Praise, Calls for More in 2010

By Leigh Anne Williams -- Publishers Weekly, 6/22/2009 7:10:00 AM

More than 80 booksellers and a small group of publishers gathered June 20 and 21 at the Radisson Admiral Hotel on Toronto’s waterfront for the Canadian Bookseller Association’s new summer conference, which included professional development seminars, a “speed-dating” session for booksellers to meet with publisher sales reps, the CBA’s annual meeting, as well as the presentation of the CBA’s Libris Awards. And most in attendance seemed to consider the fledgling new format a success. The CBA only had a few months to plan and pull together an alternative event after learning in early February that BookExpo Canada, the annual trade show for the Canadian publishing and bookselling industry, had been cancelled by Reed Exhibitions. As booksellers mingled among publisher tables in a crowded atrium of the hotel on Saturday afternoon, many praised the conference for being more intimate than BEC, but many hope for a larger show in 2010.

Lee Trentadue, owner of Galiano Island Books, flew to Toronto from British Columbia for the conference. “I love it. I think it feels so much more for independents than anything we’ve ever done before. It’s very intimate, you get to meet a lot more booksellers in a smaller setting,” she said. And even Trentadue liked the first CBA effort, she said she hoped it would be bigger next year. Eleven publishers participated in the speed-dating lunch and only seven publishers set up tables in the atrium. Penguin Canada was the only large multinational present. “I wish more publishers were here, but I think they’ll come back because this has been so successful,” she said.

Bronwyn Addico from Words Worth Books in Waterloo, Ont. also commended the organizers for planning practical, hands-on professional development seminars such as one that offered tips for creating striking displays and another that demonstrated how booksellers could use Twitter, Facebook and blogs to build relationships with their customers. “BEC always felt like a big party,” but she preferred this more focused approach, she said.

The conference was promoted with the line “Stronger, smarter, shorter, sweeter,” but for some shorter was not sweeter. Steve Budnarchuk, co-owner of Audreys Books said he would have liked more, a full two days, since he had already had all the expense of flying from Edmonton. This year’s conference ended in the early afternoon on Sunday.

The CBA Libris Awards were especially exciting for authors Joseph Boyden and Mélanie Watt who each won two awards. Boyden took home both the author of the year award fiction book of the year award for his latest novel Through Black Spruce, published by Viking Canada, and the author of the year award. Watt, known for her internationally successful series Scaredy Squirrel (published by KidsCan Press) also won two awards for children’s author of the year and children’s illustrator of the year.

Penguin Group (Canada) also had a very good year, winning the award for marketing achievement of the year for its campaign promoting its Extraordinary Canadian series.And Adrienne Kerr was named sales representative of the year.

House of Anansi Press celebrated being named publisher of the year and another win for its author Margaret Atwood for her non-fiction book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. And Jillian Tamaki won the book design of the year award for Skim, published by Groundwood Books.

It was also a stellar night for Cormorant Books, which was named small press publisher of the year, while publisher Marc Côté won the editor of the year award. Winnipeg-based McNally Robinson Booksellers was named bookseller of the year. Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium, known for fighting long-legal battles against Canada Customs over censorship issues all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, won the specialty bookseller of the year award. North 49 Books won the distributor of the year award for the third consecutive year.

Executive director Susan Dayus said the CBA was counting the conference as a big success. "Some booksellers told me they came just to support the CBA," she said, but they said afterwards that they were pleased with the substance of what the CBA had been able to pull together in such a short time and found the professional development sessions focused and useful. "The only sort of negative thing we heard was that some booksellers wanted more," she acknowledged.