During the Readmagine 2019 conference took place a professional conversation with Oren Teicher – CEO of the American Booksellers Association- with a selected group of publishers, distributors and booksellers at Casa del Lector (the FGSR headquarter).
This participation was the result of the collaboration of Feria del Libro de Madrid (Madrid’s Book Fair) with Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez and IPDA.
Teicher explained how the independent bookstores have thrived in spite of Amazon and the rest of the new big players (the components of GAFA system).
The data that Oren Teicher presented showed a sustained growth in the number of bookstores (ABA members) during the last ten years and a matching trend in the indie bookstores sales increase, with a positive net income (net income before taxes) from 2016. Some of the sources of this process are linked to few of the book categories: adult non-fiction and kid’s books are driving market growth. Is also remarkable the increasing relevance of Hardcover figures: hardcover units have crossed above e-books, and the gap is widening during the last years.
In this video you will follow all the information, data, analysis and other insights from the leader who has been responsible of ABA during the most challenging times.
Following his words: “Bookstores are a place where different thoughts, different ideologies and different perspectives all sit lined up on a shelf next to one another. Bookstores are the perfect place for the conversation to begin about how we can understand different people’s perspectives and how we can reconcile different points of view”.
Oren Teicher is CEO of the American Booksellers Association. He has been with the ABA for nearly 30 years and was CEO for the past decade, when core membership rose from 1,401 in 2009 to 1,757 in 2018. Teicher came to ABA in 1990 as the association’s Associate Executive Director. During his almost 30 years at ABA, he served as Director of Government Affairs, the founding President of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, and, through 2009, as ABA’s Chief Operating Officer. Teicher succeeded ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz in June 2009. Founded in 1900, the American Booksellers Association is a national not-for-profit trade organization that works to help independently owned bookstores grow and succeed. ABA’s core members are key participants in their communities’ local economy and culture, and to assist them ABA provides education, information dissemination, business products, and services; creates relevant programs; and engages in public policy, industry, and local first advocacy.
