Announcing the Summer 2012 Okra Picks

Southern indie booksellers like their okra, and they love their southern books. The new list of Okra Picks-- great southern books, fresh off the vine-- has just been released. A dozen new books that all have two things in common: They are southern in nature, and there is a southern indie bookseller that wants everyone to read each one! 

The Summer Okra Picks List!

15 Seconds by Andrew Gross
William Morrow, July 2012
9780061655975

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash
William Morrow, April 2012
9780062088147

Beach House Memories by Mary Alice Monroe
Gallery Books, May 2012
9781439170663

The Cove by Ron Rash
Ecco, April 2012
9780061804199

Desert Rose by Edythe Scott Bagley
University of Alabama Press, May 2012
9780817317652

Don't Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman
Minotaur, May 2012
9780312606930

Hell or High Water by Joy Castro
Thomas Dunne Books, July 2012
9781250004574

The Palmetto and Its South Carolina Home by Jim Harrison
University of South Carolina Press, April 2012
9781611170498

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin, illustrated by James Dean
HarperCollins, May 2012
9780062110589

Precious Bones by Mika Ashley-Hollinger
Delacorte Books for Young Readers, May 2012
9780385742191

Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer
St. Martins Press, July 2012
9781250007070

Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage
Dial Books, May 2012
9780803736702

For more information contact
Wanda Jewell
Executive Director
Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance
803.995.9530
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Call for nominations to the SIBA Board

It’s that time again to pick the bookseller leaders that will move SIBA forward.  SIBA’s Board Members are a hard-working bunch.  Serving on the SIBA Board is both rewarding and enlightening.  Consider someone today for a board position.  Self-nominations are encouraged.  Anyone can nominate.  Candidates must be from a SIBA core member in good standing.  SIBA functions under The Carver Method. Take a look at Policy #12 – Board Job Description and Policy #16 - Board Member’ Code of Conduct for more information.

Board members do not get paid for service but all expenses incurred are covered by the organization.  The position requires attendance at 3 board meetings annually plus a Carver training session and adequate preparation for all meetings is also required.  The board seeks persons from the core membership taking into account the following:  relevant Policy Governance skills (including the ability to work within group decisions, to use conceptual categories of Ends and Means, to judge performance only against previously stated expectations), relevant industry skills and knowledge, geography, and store size.

SIBA’s current Board members will assess interest among potential candidates.  A slate will be determined from the potential candidates by the Board of Directors and presented for vote by the membership before the Fall Trade Show.

Deadline for nominations is April 20.

Click here to nominate a candidate to the SIBA Board.

2012 SIBA Book Award Long List

Announcing the 2012 SIBA Book Award Long List

(Columbia, SC)—The Long List for the 2012 SIBA Book Award has just been released by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. Totaling almost 120 different titles, the “Long List” includes every eligible title nominated for the award—representing the bookseller and reader favorites of 2011 in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children’s, young adult and cooking categories. From Lisa Alther to Erica Wright, Mary Kay Andrews to Daniel Woodrell, the Long List is the ultimate southern reading list from the people who would know—southern indie booksellers.

See the full list of titles here: http://www.sibaweb.com/siba-book-award/nominations

In the following months SIBA Booksellers will vote on finalists in each category, and the final winners will be picked by a jury of SIBA booksellers. Winners will be announced in July the week of Independence Day. In September, in Naples, FL, at the annual SIBA Trade Show, the winners and finalists will be recognized during the popular Writers’ Block Auction which raises money to promote the Awards and raise awareness of the importance of independent booksellers to the literary community.

The SIBA Book Awards were created not just to recognize great Southern books, but to give southern readers an enviable list of books to enjoy, read, buy, and give as gifts. As of this time, the SIBA Book Award remains one of the most far-reaching and high-profile awards for Southern literature. To be eligible for the SIBA Book Award, nominated books must 1) be southern in nature or by an southern author (preferably both!), 2) have been published the previous year, and 3) have been nominated by a SIBA-member bookstore or one of their customers.

Now is the time to revisit your to-be-read stack. The odds are, some of the books in the list below are waiting for you there!
For more information, visit http://www.sibaweb.com/siba-book-award

The 2012 Long List:

Children

Always Neverland by Zoe Barton (Harpercollins)
Animalogy by Marianne Berkes (Sylvan Dell) 
Bigger than a Breadbox by Laurel Snyder (Random House)
Jelly Bean Finds her Special Place by Jane Edwards (Lewis Color, Inc.)
Jo MacDonald Saw a Pond by Mary Quattlebaum (Dawn Publications) 
Liddil Gets Her Light by Tracey Cox (Guardian Angel Publishing)
Over in Australia by Marianne Berkes (Dawn Publications) 
Wake Up Man by Thomas Rain Crowe (Grateful Steps Publishing)
Which Side Are You On?: The Story of a Song by George Ella Lyon (Cinco Puntos Press)

Cooking

A Southerly Course by Martha Foose (Clarkson Potter)
Basic to Brilliant Y'all by Virginia Willis (Ten Speed Press)
Irresistible History of Southern Food by Rick McDaniel (History Press)
New Southern Garden Cookbook by Sheri Castle (UNC Press)
New Southern Latino Table by Sandra Gutierrez (UNC Press)
Southern Biscuits by Nathalie Dupree (Gibbs Smith)
The Happy Table of Eugene Walter: Southern Spirits in Food and Drink edited by Don Goodman & Thomas Head (UNC Press)
Well, Shut My Mouth! by Stephanie L. Tyson (John F. Blair)
Wildly Affordable Organic by Linda  Watson (Da Capo)

Fiction

A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd (William Morrow)
A Passel of Hate by Joe Epley (CreateSpace)
Accidental Birds of the Carolinas by Marjorie  Hudson (Press 53)
The Art of Saying Goodbye by Ellyn Bache (Harpercollins)
At the End of the Road by Grant Jerkins (Berkley)
Atlanta: A Novella by Loreen Niewenhuis (Main Street Rag)
The Ballad of Tom Dooley by Sharyn  McCrumb (St. Martin's Press)
The Beach Trees by Karen White (New American Library)
Blood Clay by Valerie Nieman (Press 53)
Butterfly's Child by Angela Davis-Gardner (Dial)
The Butterfly's Daughter by Mary Alice Monroe (Gallery Books)
Coming Up for Air by Patti Callahan Henry (St. Martin's Press)
The Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew (Kensington)
Echo by Dana Smith (19 Reasons)
Exposure by Therese Fowler (Ballantine)
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson (Ecco)
Folly Beach by Dorothea Benton Frank (Harpercollins)
Fortune's Son by Emery Lee (SourceBooks)
Home Free by Fern Michaels (Zebra)
The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe (Tor)
The Inheritance of Beauty by Nicole Seitz (Thomas Nelson)
Iron House by John  Hart (St. Martin's Press)
Just The Thing To Be by Tracey Cox (Guardian Angel Publishing)
Late Edition by Fern Michaels (Kensington)
Leaving Lukens by Laura Wharton (Broad Creek Press)
Mercy Creek by Matt Matthews (Hub City Press)
The Mile Marker Murders by C. W.  Saari (Boutique of Quality Books)
Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle by Ann Ross (Penguin)
Naked Came the Leaf Peeper by Brian Lee Knopp et al (Burning Bush Press of Asheville)
Night Train by Clyde Edgerton (Little Brown)
Nightwoods by Charles Frazier (Random House)
Ninth Man by Brad Crowther (Ingalls Publishing Group)
Notes toward the Story and Other Stories by Corey Mesler (Aqueous Books)
Over in Australia by Marianne Berkes (Dawn Publications)
The Ocean Forest by Troy Nooe (Ingalls Publishing Group)
The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell (Little Brown)
Quickening by Liza Wieland (SMU Press)
Reign of Madness by Lynn Cullen (Putnam)
The Road to Hell is Seldom Seen by Cappy Hall Rearick (Createspace)
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn  Ward (Bloomsbury)
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt by Caroline Preston (Ecco)
Small Hotel by Robert Olen Butler (Grove)
Stranger You Seek by Amanda Kyle Williams (Bantam)
Strangers on Montagu Street by Karen White (New American Library)
Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews (St. Martin's Press)
Sunrise on the Battery by Beth Webb Hart (Thomas Nelson)
Ten Beach Road by Wendy  Wax (Berkley)
Trust by Sean Keefer (Old Line Publishing)
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, There's A Body In The Car by Fran Rizer (Bella Rosa Books)
Under the Mercy Trees by Heather Newton (Harper Perennial)
Under the Skin by Vicki Lane (Dell)
Washed in the Blood by Lisa Alther (Mercer U. Press)
The Watery Part of the World by Michael Parker (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
Where To Now? by Rod Rogers (IUniverse)

Nonfiction

America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation by David Goldfield (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Dinner With Tennessee Williams by Troy Gilbert (Gibbs Smith)
From Here to Absurdity: pink flamingos, vibrators & other comical events by David Hunter (Oconee Spirit Press)
Gone With the Wind, A Bestseller's Odyssey by Ellen F. Brown  and John Wiley (Taylor Trade) 
Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman's Journey by David Joy (Bright Mountain Books)
It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace by Rye Barcott (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Lions of the West by Robert Morgan (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
My Paddle to the Sea by John  Lane (UGA Press)
The Poetry Company, a memoir by Joe Cobb Crawford (Emory Jones, LLC)
Praying for Strangers by River Jordan (Berkley)
Set Free to Live Free: Breaking Through the 7 Lies Women Tell Themselves by Saundra Dalton-Smith (Revell)
Sue Ellen's Girl Ain't Fat, She Just Weighs Heavy: The Belle of All Things Southern Dishes on Men, Money, and Not Losing Your Midlife Mind by Shellie Tomlinson (Berkley)
Taking a Stand by Juan Mendez and Marjory Wentworth (Palgrave Macmillan)
The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak by Randy Fertel (U Press of MS)
Upheaval in Charleston by Susan Williams (UGA Press)
Wait Until Tomorrow by Pat MacEnulty (The Feminist Press)
Working South by Mary Whyte (USC Press)
You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl by Celia  Rivenbark (St. Martin's Griffin)

Poetry

Abandoned Quarry by John Lane (Mercer U. Press)
Ascent by Doris Davenport (CreateSpace)
Copperhead by Rachel Richardson (Carnegie Mellon)
Crack Light by Thomas Rain Crowe (Wind Publishing)
Head Off & Split: Poems (2011) by Nikky Finney (NWU Press)
If This World Falls Apart by Lou Lipsitz (Lynx House Press)
Instructions for Killing the Jackal by Erica Wright (Black Lawrence Press)
Nineteen Visions of Christmas by Sally Buckner (Main Street Rag)
Presence by Scott Wiggerman (Pecan Grove)
Seriously Dangerous by Helen Losse (Main Street Rag)
She Hands Me the Razor by Richard Krawiec (Press 53)
Southern Fictions by Kathryn Stripling Byer (Jacar Press)
Talking about Movies with Jesus by David Kirby (LSU Press)
Terroir by Robert Morgan (Penguin)
Unaccountable Weather by Kathryn Kirkpatrick (Press 53)
Waking by Ron Rash (Hub City Press)
Weaving a New Eden by Sherry Chandler (Wind Publications)

Young Adult

Breath of Angel by Karyn Henley ( Waterbrook)
The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan (Delacorte)
Darwen  Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact by A.J. Hartley (Razor Bill)
Dead Rules by Randy Russell (Harper Teen)
Magnolia League by Katie Crouch (Poppy Books)
The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab (Hyperion)
Paper Covers Rock by Jenny Hubbard (Delacorte)
Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley (Simon and Schuster)
Second Time's A Charm by Mary Flinn (Aviva)

Spring Book Show is now GABBS Atlanta!

Spring Book Show has a new name. GABBS Atlanta, but it is the same Great Show, and SIBA & ABA will be there to share!

The Education at GABBS Atlanta will include ABA Education on Friday morning –

ABA Education:  The Best of Winter Institute 7’s Best Practices Sessions
Friday, March 16th in Room 102, 8:30 am – 10:00 am
The 2012 Winter Institute featured a series of 12 half-hour “Best Practices” sessions on everything from children’s bookselling, human resources, and Google Analytics to marketing your store as a digital location, empowering your indie business alliance, and more. “The Best of the Best” is a roundup of booksellers’ top tips from Wi7.  ABA education is sponsored by Ingram Ingram Content Group.

And from SIBA on Saturday morning –

Best Practices for Working GABBS to Your Store’s Advantage
Saturday, March 17th will in Room 102, 8:30 am – 10:00 am
Veteran Bargain Book Buyers will tell you how they work the floor, what they look for, and why.  Learn how to sort through the vendors and their wares with your store, your customers, and your bottom line all in mind.