​A huge thank you to our Spring Forum Sponsors: Dan and Gary at Prologue Bookshop, bookstore tour stores: Beanbag Books, Birdie Books, The Book Loft of German Village, Bookspace Columbus, Cover to Cover Children's Books, Gramercy Books, Eric Obenauf, Eliza Wood Obenauf, Brett Gregory and the entire staff at Two Dollar Radio, 7 Stories Press, Sarabande Books, Tin House Press, Biblioasis, Mariner Books, HarperCollins, Peachtree Teen, Chronicle Books, Bloomsbury and She Writes press for making this year's event incredible. We welcomed 75 attendees to Columbus over two days.

We started Spring Forum with a seven store Columbus area bookstore tour ending with a reception at Prologue Bookshop. Followed Spring Forum at Two Dollar Radio featuring authors Alex Crespo, Christine Lai, Gabi Burton, Linda Kass, Sara Herchenroether, Thao Thai, Nina Barret and Abra Berens. We had a day full of education, author presentations, lunch, bookselling camaraderie and ended the evening with a poetry reading from Hanif Abdurraqib.

Full Spring Forum Schedule >>

Job Title
Executive Assistant
Location
Chicagoland Area or Remotely from IL, IN, KY, MI, OH or WI
Terms
Part Time / 20 hours per week
Rate
$20 per hour

About Us
The Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association is a non-profit bookstore advocacy organization based in the Great Lakes and Midwest region. Covering Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. We provide education, events, social networking opportunities and marketing programs annually.
 
About the Role
We are seeking an Executive Assistant to handle day to day tasks of the organization as well as planning and execution of annual events.
 
Responsibilities
Assist the Executive Director
Manage day-to-day tasks of the organization
Bookstore and publisher outreach
            Tradeshow and large-scale event planning and execution

Experience
Seeking Experience working on a trade show or on large-scale events
           Including budgeting, floor plans and publisher relations
Bookselling and or publishing experience
Marketing experience
Budgeting

Familiarity or expertise in the following programs and platforms
Constant Contact
Microsoft Office
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
AirTable
Quickbooks
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
TikTok

To Apply
Please email your resume to [email protected]

​Independent Bookstore Day is Saturday! GLIBA is thrilled to have worked on three separate state indie bookstore crawls this year! (Illinois, Indiana and Michigan) This newsletter showcases the creativity and hard work that went into planning these events. Following IBD we want to set up a call with the teams that lead each crawl and bookstores that want to participate or set up their own crawl next year. We intend on sharing best practices, workflow, results and what we can learn from each other. Please watch for a meeting invite in the weeks following IBD. Here's a little about what we did this year.

ILLINOIS
Illinois and Chicago bookstores partnered to host a 40+ bookstore crawl that includes a printed passport & pins. After an Initial $20 purchase customers receive a printed passport containing all participating stores. As they visit stores their passport gets stamped. After visiting 10 or 15 stores participants receive an enamel pin and a 10-15% discount from all participating bookstores for the year! For more info visit chilovebooks.com. Coverage on WGN | NewCity