The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association's annual meeting in Portland, Ore., held September 27–29, saw its strongest attendance numbers since 2019, tallying just shy of 600 pre-show registrations, according to executive director Brian Juenemann and operations director Greg Holmes.
In all, PNBA welcomed more than 240 bookstore owners and staffers, provided 220 exhibitor badges for a total of 123 vendors, and brought in 14 librarians from the region. An additional 78 featured authors participated in the show, including opening keynote presenter Michael Marx (Reining in the Bulls, Island Press/Princeton), who delivered an opening keynote on legal battles against environmental polluters, corporate ethics, and making sure “our work fosters alignment of our values with our actions.”
Of the 105 bookstores represented, 25 were new members. PNBA board president Christine Longmuir of Two Rivers Bookstore in St. Johns, Ore., noted that these included entrepreneurs opening bookstores in conservative areas and book deserts in the Northwest region.
Among these, the Next Chapter Bookstore, in the northeast Oregon town of Hermiston, is operated by mother-and-daughter team Angela Pursel and Alexis McCarthy. Brewminatti coffee shop and music venue, along the Yakima River in Prosser, Wash., is adding books to its product mix. Sci-fi and fantasy pop-up Tropes Readery is based south of Portland in Wilsonville, Ore. And FMC Books in Missoula, Mont., is hitching its star to the romance genre.
In the membership meeting and on the show floor, PNBA leaders said they wanted to foster “an ecosystem of kindness” among the membership; Juenemann summarized the ethos with a maxim from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure: “Be excellent to each other.” Longmuir called for a culture of “collaboration, not competition,” in which established booksellers shared their experiences with startups; in that spirit, Two Rivers and Spoke & Word Books of Milwaukie, Ore., host bookseller meetups and exchange questions and tips.
Relationships are indeed central to the regional gatherings. Board member Sarah Hutton of Village Books and Paper Dreams in Bellingham, Wash., reminded PNBA attendees that two esteemed sales reps, Christine Foye of Simon & Schuster and Andy Weiner of Abrams, are retiring this year. And Pam French and Judey Kalchick of the Book Industry Charitable Foundation announced updates to their store disaster policy, saying that Binc now has a rapid response enhancement that can provide $2,000 in emergency funds within 24 hours. This enables much faster action and requires less paperwork from stressed individuals, Kalchik told PW.
Around the show, attendees expressed minor trepidation about the holiday supply chain. Allyson Howard, managing director of Invitation Bookshop in Gig Harbor, Wash., said her store ran short of hardcover copies of Dungeon Crawler Carl—author Matt Dinniman is a Gig Harbor local—and Kathryn Stockett’s The Calamity Club, and noted that shortages could mean bookstores reorder extra. Paul Hanson, of Village Books, said his store “woefully underordered” Rebecca Yarros’s Threshing Day, but was relieved when Ingram quickly resupplied with reserved inventory from its Indie Vault.
For one store in particular, supply can’t keep up with demand, although the reasons are unique. Kingfisher Books is located in downtown Coupeville, Wash., which provided the quaint maritime setting for the 1998 film adaptation of Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic. Now, with the release of Practical Magic 2—though it was largely filmed in the U.K.—Coupeville is overrun by enthusiasts of the black-cat lady persuasion. Bookseller Felix Hall organized a screening of the original movie, with midnight margaritas.
“We are mobbed, breaking sales records every day,” Kingfisher co-owner Meg Olson said, conjuring “parades of women in witch hats.” The store was ready with copies of Hoffman’s latest, The Witches of Cambridge (Scribner), but backlist, tarot cards à la Llewellen’s catalog, and “all things witchy” are flying off the shelves. At the Sourcebooks booth, Olson eyed Freida McFadden’s The Witch (Poisoned Pen, Oct.) and ordered a case.
An onlooker suggested that the clamor for hexes and spells could be a response to the toil and trouble of U.S. politics. “We need some magic,” Olson agreed.
