Eileen Dengler describes herself as “an idea person and a problem solver,” adding, “If I hear booksellers say something is a problem, all I want to do is solve it.”
This personality trait has greatly benefited the indie bookselling community since 1984, when Dengler began her career as the American Booksellers Association’s director of meetings and conventions. For nine years, she was responsible for all aspects of the ABA’s annual industry convention. Since 1999, Dengler has served as the first and only executive director of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association, whose members hail from six mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C. Before Dengler eases into retirement at the end of 2026, she will train her successor, Liz Hottel. Dengler will also continue running the independent, nonprofit Professional Booksellers School, which she launched five years ago. It has, to date, certified 382 booksellers who’ve each completed a 16-week course in at least one of four tracks. Dengler will hand off that responsibility in 2027, when a new leader will be hired by the school’s board.
Just two months into her tenure at NAIBA, Dengler put together its inaugural fall conference, and since then has made it a practice to coordinate gatherings of booksellers that best suited their needs at that time. During the pandemic, NAIBA partnered with the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance to hold a virtual conference, New Voices, New Rooms. After being held online for three years, the first in-person NVNR took place in 2023. NVNR 2025 drew a record 580 attendees to Atlanta in August.
Dengler is also responsible for creating NAIBA programs that benefit booksellers and publishers on a national level. With the Publisher Advocate Program, sales reps share marked up Edelweiss digital catalogs with booksellers who would not normally see their notes. NAIBA also coordinates publisher promotions designed to streamline ordering: reps input their specials into a spreadsheet that is then sent every Monday to the executive directors of the other seven regional bookseller organizations for distribution to their members.
“I’ve heard at numerous ABA meetings,” Dengler says, “booksellers saying, ‘If you’re not getting that Monday spreadsheet, you’d better get on it.’ ”
