Become a Mentor Store

Strengthen bookselling by sharing what you already know. Booksellers report that becoming a mentor helps them rethink their own procedures and generate new ideas. Responsibilities: Call your mentee once a month for a year. MIBA supplies a list of suggested topics you can use as a guide. Be sure your mentee understands how to approach events such as BEA, Winter Institute, and the Heartland Fall Forum. Schedule time to meet your mentee at an industry event. If you and your mentee prefer a different approach, feel free to make your own based on what works for you.

 

Become a Bookseller on Deck

Too often, when MIBA learns a store is in a challenging spot, it's too late. We'd like to have experts in the wings to act as a peer-to-peer sounding board when stores find themselves in a bind. As a Bookseller on Deck, MIBA will keep your name at the ready--we'll list you as a Bookseller on Deck on our website and share it with our members. When a store is stuck in a challenging spot, they can reach out to for support and assistance. 

 

To volunteer, please email Carrie at carrie@midwestbooksellers.org and let us know you'd like to get involved. The program acts on a rolling basis, so there's no official start date.

With just a 30-minute drive between them, Judith Kissner and Sheri Olson were once considered competitors, as least technically. Judith is the owner of Scout & Morgan Books in Cambridge, MN. Sheri had been the owner of Reading Frenzy Book Shop in Zimmerman, MN, but she recently made the difficult decision to close her store. In the spirit of making lemonade out of lemons, Judith approached Sheri with the idea of offering her a staff position as Events Coordinator. Their styles were so complimentary, they 

hit it off and made it official. Sheri began her post on May 1. 

Judith says, "We never had an events coordinator and, as a result, I haven't sought out as many opportunities for our store as we could have. As we've grown, I've come to realize my time is best spent curating our selection of new and used books as well as building relationships with our customers and community partners. So the position was there, but I hadn't actively pursued trying to fill it. Thanks to the MIBA facebook group, I was able to get to know Sheri. She clearly has the skills and experience gained as an event coordinator from her former Reading Frenzy Book Shops and more importantly understands independent bookselling. She has built strong relationships with publishers and authors who know that she does what it takes to create a successful event. It's my hope that by having Sheri as our event coordinator, our store will become a destination for both regional and national authors and increase customer loyalty to our store."