It’s the end of an era for the National Association of Independent Publishers Representatives. Eric Miller, a charter member of NAIPR who served as its president for a decade, has passed the baton as of today to Eileen Bertelli of Parson Weems, a 25-year publishing industry veteran, who previously worked for Bantam Doubleday Dell and Penguin, and served as director of trade sales for Kensington from 1993-1999. Bertelli has been a Parson Weems commission rep in the New England and the Mid-Atlantic region for the past two years. She is NAIPR’s first female president.

Miller, who’s been a commission rep since 1981 and headed Miller Book Trade Marketing in Chicago from 1985 until last year with his brother, Bruce Joshua Miller, has moved on from repping to focus on building his 10-year-old small press, Wicker Park Press. His brother continues to head Miller Book Trade Marketing.

In a “farewell address” posted on his blog this weekend, Miller thanked his NAIPR colleagues, both past and present, for their service and noted a few of NAIPR’s innovations designed to better serve commission reps, such as the implementation of the Frontlist Plus Universal electronic ordering system 20 years ago. Frontlist Plus Universal was recently upgraded and integrated into Above the Treeline’s Edelweiss inventory management tool. NAIPR Basic went live on August 13, and NAIPR Enhanced and NAIPR Premium are scheduled to launch in January 2013.

NAIPR was founded in 1990 by the late Bob Carrier, its first president. Bob Rooney currently serves as the organization’s executive director. NAIPR lists as members approximately 200 active publishers’ reps who belong to 64 commission groups in the U.S. and Canada, as well as 100 retired reps, for a total of 300 members.