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Fiocco Says ABA Must Expand Focus
The association’s new board president has a full agenda
J
amie Fiocco, owner and general manager of Flyleaf
Books in Chapel Hill, N.C., assumed the role of pres-
ident of the board of the American Booksellers Asso-
ciation in June and was immediately confronted with
one of the biggest challenges the organization has faced in
several years: finding a successor to long-serving ABA CEO
Oren Teicher, who is retiring at the end of 2019. “I knew when
I ran for the position that having a successful transition to a
new CEO would be priority one,” she said.
As for whom the ABA is considering for the role of CEO,
Fiocco would only say that the association expects to have
an announcement ready after the independent bookstore
fall regional shows. In the meantime, there are numerous
other issues to deal with—not the least of which is a growing
constituency of smaller stores, including microstores and
pop-ups, that are demanding more attention and looking
for specialized education, mentorship, and even financial
assistance.
Fiocco acknowledged the need to address their concerns.
“The ABA has worked hard at—and succeeded in—growing
our membership,” she said. “This means we have new and
younger owners and booksellers with different ideas of what
a bookstore is and looks like. We are, in a way, a victim of our
own success, and I think the comments we’ve had regarding
support for these members is a sign we need to step up our
services for them. This is not to say we won’t continue devel-
oping services for medium and large stores, but we need to
expand our focus.”
Fiocco said that a mentorship program is being developed,
as is a “boot camp” concept for smaller stores that will most
likely be tied to Winter Institute. As regards financial assis-
tance, she noted that it is beyond the scope of the ABA, though
the Book Industry Charitable Foundation is considering
options to help smaller stores.
“We realize that money, travel, and time are hard to come
by for smaller stores,” Fiocco said, “so we’re being creative
about how to get support and education to stores that need
it, using video meetings, webinars, online education, and the
like, in addition to in-person events.”
Another constituency asking for more attention from the
ABA is children’s booksellers, as became clear at last month’s
Children’s Institute in Pittsburgh, where, PW reported at thetime, the Town Hall conversation “turned tense.” Attendees
challenged the ABA on a range of subjects, including fostering
diversity and inclusion and working to make bookselling more
sustainable by negotiating better discounts from publishers.
“This was our first Town Hall at a Children’s Institute, with
plans to continue this new tradition,” said Fiocco, who
acknowledged that the booksellers had all raised valid points.
“Having a vocal membership is a great situation to be in, but
it means we have to be ahead of the curve as much as possible
as far as education and communication.”
Fiocco noted that booksellers and small-business owners
can respond in two ways to the need to improve their finances:
“We can be emotional and passionate, or we can be business
owners and think in a way that we can really move the needle.”
She said that as many as two-thirds of the ABA’s members
routinely feel financial pressure—particularly the midsize
10,000-sq.-ft. stores that are “getting killed in the retail
apocalypse”—and that the most effective tool the ABA can
employ in any negotiation is to have accurate data from
member stores. She stressed the importance of stores sub-
mitting their data to the Abacus survey, the ABA’s main
financial survey, “so we can go to business partners to say
‘this is our reality’ in a very businesslike manner—then we
can try to find solutions for both sides.” She also emphasized
that publishers are not the enemy but are “partners” that are
under many of the same financial pressures as booksellers.
As for making the ABA diverse and inclusive, Fiocco pointed
out that participation and activism starts at home. “If folks4 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JULY 29, 2019
©^ JAMIE^ FIOCCOFiocco, pictured above, is focused on finding a new CEO for the ABA.