Just when members of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association thought their spring trade show (the sole surviving spring regional tabletop trade show in the country) was on its last leg, attendance—and, more importantly, orders—at last month's event in Seattle proved it a viable venue for book sales and promotion after all.

In an effort to attract more booksellers to this year's event after a lackluster 2003 showing in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, PNBA moved its event to Seattle. The result: nearly double the attendance. More than 100 stores sent nearly 300 booksellers; 75 exhibitors sent over 200 reps; and more than 670 people attended overall. The event was held at the Seattle Airport Hilton March 18—20.

"We were thinking that this was going to be the last one," said Cindy Heidemann, Northwest sales rep for Publishers Group West. "But I don't think that it is now," she added, pointing to the busy floor well into the first day on the trade show. "When they opened those doors and all those people were waiting, it was heartening."

PNBA executive director Thom Chambliss said that while the 2003 attendance was particularly poor, the organization had seen a steady decline in that locale in recent years and was faced with either improving the numbers or canceling the event. Having achieved the former, the latter seems unlikely. Still, by moving the event west to Seattle, PNBA struggled with serving booksellers from the more eastern parts of the region. (It is a sizable challenge, considering the distance from Bozeman, Mont., to Seattle is roughly the same as that from New York to Chicago.)

"We offered a lot more travel scholarships for people more than 250 miles away," Chambliss told PW. "We gave 10 this year. Most of those stores would not have sent anyone."

PW was hard pressed to find any vendors who were unhappy with the turnout. "I'm kind of stunned," said George Carroll from Redsides Publishing Services in Bellevue, Wash. "I haven't seen this many people at a spring show in a hell of a long time."

"The increase in attendance is clearly an improvement," said Curtis Lowe from Book Travelers West, based in Seattle. "But this hurts booksellers east of the mountains. Still, a lot of business is getting done here. People come here and they love to write orders." Lowe represents Workman, the Perseus Book Group, Running Press and Dove, among others.

"Everything I've heard from the reps is very, very positive for the first time in many years," said Jim Harris at Graphic Arts Center. "I probably have 20 orders; my guess is that's at least a month on the road. I can't see all the accounts and that's the whole reason we started the spring show in the first place."

The PNBA spring show was founded in Spokane, Wash., 25 years ago. Chambliss said it has become even more important since publishers have to rely so much on phone reps. "It really does help to put a face to the company," he added.

The larger houses that exhibit do not write many orders, but the reps told PW that making connections and putting the books in front of the book buyers was important.

"The larger stores are savvy and send all their employees, and that's really good," observed Meredith Vajda at Penguin. "They are the ones that are going to take titles back and hand-sell them."

HarperCollins sales rep Seira Wilson told PW she was particularly pleased in people's interest in the company's book club selections and guides. "They get people to think beyond the usual suspects," she added. "They're already good at it, so anything that I can do to make their job easier is a win-win situation."

Random House's forthcoming Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Discovered Hitler's Lost Sub by Robert Kurson stood out as one of the buzz books from the floor. "We have made some books here," said Random district sales manager Katie Mehan. Another nonfiction title booksellers raved about was Houghton Mifflin's The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It by Neal Bascomb. "It's about running like Seabiscuit was about horseracing," commented Alaine Borgias from Village Books in Bellingham, Wash.

Authors and Awards

After the book and author breakfast some booksellers said they were particularly taken with Dawn Prince-Hughes's talk about Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism (Harmony) and Portland's own Phillip Margolin on his newest thriller Sleeping Beauty (HarperCollins). Author Susan Vreeland (Girl in Hyacinth Blue) spent all afternoon on the floor talking one-on-one with booksellers about her latest artist-inspired novel—The Forest Lover (Viking), about Emily Carr.

Speaking of fiction, a few titles talked about on the floor included Grove's Remember Me, the second novel by Booker short list author Trezza Azzopardi; and Algonquin's Useful Girl by Marcus Stevens. At the Consortium rep's table, copies of Birds of a Feather, the second Maisie Dobbs novel by Edgar nominee Jacqueline Winspear, were a hot commodity.

PNBA presents its annual book awards at the spring show, and the winners always garner a lot of attention. This year's winners were: As Cool As I Am by Pete Fromm (Picador); Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (Vintage); Jarhead by Anthony Swofford (Scribner); Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls by Matt Ruff (HarperPerennial); Hawks Rest: A Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone by Gary Ferguson (National Geographic); and Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America by Linda Lawrence Hunt (Univ. of Idaho).

Unfortunately, just before the trade show, the University of Idaho Press closed operations, but wholesaler Partners West stepped up to accommodate orders for Bold Spirit while the author and her agent look for another publisher.

"We're happy the show did as well as it did this year," Chambliss told PW. For 2005, PNBA plans to remain in Seattle and hold the show in mid-March.