Posts Tagged SIBA trade show
Southern Social Networking Summit a HIT!
Posted by Wanda in Social Networking on January 8, 2010
I’m back from the Southern Social Networking Summit in Greenville, SC. It was an exhausting & exhilarating two days. I want you to know that I am busy compiling the results of everyone’s efforts. I have nearly 40 oversized pages of notes taken by the break-out groups that I am organizing and will be posting over the next week in this blog. So many people have written blog posts, posted videos & photos, twittered and facebooked, and I want to take the time to thank everyone. And I want to share these links with you. The video clips include testimonials and a word from Gary Vaynerchuk.
Video Clips (posted by Trey Pennington)
Photos (taken by Curtis Rogers from the SC State Library)
“I will never again suggest that SIBA exhibits go to one day.”
Posted by Wanda in SIBA Trade Shows on October 21, 2009
Note the Eat, Sleep, Read bags - Thank YOU Simon & Schuster
First, I had someone from a very large publisher tell me at the end of the show on Sunday that he would “never again suggest that SIBA exhibits should go to one day”. I’d love it if he’d step forward and identify himself in the comments section of this blog. SIBA was rockin’ and rollin’ and whatnot all morning on Sunday. I watched sales reps surreptitously (and in some cases, not at all) try to pack up and booksellers were still there trying to place orders, learn about new books and programs and on and on. It was quite amazing, even to me.
Second, in our survey of booksellers who attended the trade show, among all of the things that happen at SIBA, the exhibits were far and away the most valuable and most well-attended by a margin of 45%. The next favorite events at SIBA are the various meal functions starting this year with the SIBA Supper and the Southern Writers Lunch tying for most popular.
Cowboy Mike and many others support SIBA year after year. Thank YOU!
The other high traffic popular events that competed for the top draws were the Baker & Taylor Bookseller Lounge, ABA’s Social Media and the Independent Bookseller, Writing the South Author Panel, both SignArounds, The Anatomy of Spectacular Author Events, The Taste of HarperCollins Breakfast, The Writer’s Block Auction, The Hyperion Breakfast, The All-STARS Autograph Area, and Ingram’s The Moveable Feast of Author. And one bookseller referenced “the cool Bookazine neckwear” as the item they found absolutely necessary to a successful SIBA.
The Storytelling Stage & Chefs Corner were new this year and a big hit with booksellers.
Southern Booksellers are a Riot!
Posted by Wanda in Uncategorized on October 17, 2008
I’m back now from a quick, exhausting, but really fun trip to Mobile, Alabama for the Southern Independent Booksellers Association (SIBA) conference. The exhausting part came from missing an early flight out of Newark Saturday morning and then being delayed by two hours getting back to Newark on Sunday. So goes air travel.
The photo with this post, taken by Unbridled’s Sales Director Steven Wallace, shows a group of us starting the evening Saturday night at a beautiful old bar/restaurant called Café Royale. Here, from left to right, are Shiela Woods-Navarro, Martha Arnett, and Flossie McNabb from Carpe Librum in Knoxville, TN; Jamie Fiocco of McIntyre’s Fine Books in Pittsboro, NC; Nathan Carter of the Scheer Rep Group; yours truly, proudly wielding a copy of In Hovering Flight; Jamie Kornegay of Turnrow Books in Greenwood, MS; Maggie Lowery of Lemuria Books in Jackson, MS; and SIBA Board member Kelly Justice of the Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, VA. Missing from the photo, unfortunately, are Angela Bobbit of Rock Point Books in Chattanooga, TN, Charles Greiner of Baker and Taylor, and Angela Carr of Two Sisters Bookery in Wilmington, NC.
Southern booksellers are a riot! But I’m not sure I should have followed two Alabama-born boys, Steven Wallace and Nathan Carter, from bar to bar on Saturday night (I’m not as young as I used to be). On the other hand, that midnight drag show was worth it. And I got to see some beautiful old architecture, pretty parks, and nice river views in Mobile.
Sunday I enjoyed nosing around the book displays. I got a signed copy of Brad Gooch’s new biography of Flannery O’Connor, which looks wonderful, for my husband Jim, who teaches with Brad at William Paterson University. If I’d had suitcase space I’d have come home with even more books. At the lunch-time “Movable Feast†I had fun chatting with booksellers from Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and I also enjoyed meeting and talking with novelists T. Greenwood and William Conescu (among others), who were there to talk about their novels Two Rivers and Being Written, respectively. The SIBA folks ran all the events I attended so smoothly, and they were all really friendly and helpful.
Thanks to all these folks for making me feel so welcome at SIBA. I know I’m reaching for a cliché here, but there really is something to this whole Southern hospitality thing. Add a love of books, even a chance to talk about the little things done in homage to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying in IHF (Thanks, Nathan!), and you’ve got a perfect writer’s weekend in a lovely Southern city.
–Joyce Hinnefeld
