ABA, APA hold first roundtable discussion for independents

The Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) and Australian Publishers Association (APA) held a roundtable discussion with independent booksellers and publishers in Sydney in October, the first in a planned series of collaborative meetings.

The meeting was chaired by Ventura Press MD Jane Curry, convenor of the APA’s independent publishers committee, who led discussions on how booksellers and publishers can better share information. Booksellers at the meeting included Constant Reader owner Jay Lansdowne, Potts Point Bookshop owner Anna Low and Abbey’s Bookshop buyer Lindy Jones, and publishers included Pantera Press publisher John Green and NewSouth Books director Nella Soeterboek.

The APA and ABA said sales representatives were cited as ‘by far the most important’ source of information on new books, followed by metadata from services such as TitlePage and Nielsen BookData. ‘Interestingly, although everyone agreed about the enormous value of email as a tool, clearly there is an issue of the sheer quantity of information provided, and the difficulty of small businesses to get through all that information,’ the organisations said, adding that there were also ‘lengthy discussions about improving the metadata, and providing more information to assist booksellers in their buying decisions on TitlePage’.

Category: Local news