NECBA Goes Online

By Judith Rosen, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 8/7/2008

Some children’s specialty booksellers have been slow to embrace new technology. Stores like the 25-year-old Children’s Hour in Salt Lake City don’t have a point-of-sale computerized inventory control system, and 41-year-old Once Upon a Time in Montrose, Calif., only added one in the past year. Which makes the New England Children’s Booksellers Advisory Council’s decision to create a Web site, which went live yesterday, even more of an achievement. NECBA, which was founded in 1987 and is a part of the New England Independent Booksellers Association, is the only regional children’s bookselling organization in the country.

“Stores really need to look at modern forms of publicity and marketing or they’ll be at a competitive disadvantage,” says NECBA co-chair Kenny Brechner, owner of Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers in Farmington, Maine, who did much of the coding for the site. He sees NECBA’s Web site as a way to bridge the gap between publishers and children’s booksellers. The site contains links to NECBA’s galley review project and holiday picks, and will soon have an interactive map showing where booksellers are located and each bookseller’s strengths, to help publishers plan tours.

The Web site has been on NECBA’s agenda for a long time, adds co-chair Vicky Uminowicz of Titcomb’s Bookshop in East Sandwich, Mass., who was behind the project from the start because of her own experience with her store’s Web site at bringing in customers. “Booksellers need to embrace technology,” says Uminowicz, who recently emailed her first newsletter with a video-clip of an author and is in the midst of filming a video tour of her bookstore to post on her Web site—both of which she encourages other booksellers to try.

Publishers, who have grown to appreciate the value of NECBA’s active listserv, can now locate reviews and literary contributions more readily by going to the Web site. “We love to hear what our booksellers think about our books,” says Scholastic district sales manager Nikki Mutch, a former bookseller and past NEBCA chair. “NECBA has been such a valuable resource to children’s booksellers for such a long time. Now through their new site, they will be able to share their vast knowledge with so many others.”