Extreme SIBA Makeover Edition

Get Out Your Tools!

Time was, when you wanted to know about what was going on, you would open a newspaper. It was fast, efficient and (depending on the publication) entertaining. SIBA has been circulating a newsletter to its members, and many other people in the industry for over 25 years, and although we can’t speak to it’s value as entertainment, it has always been our primary vehicle for keeping members informed of official SIBA programs and policy, as well as relevant “news.”

But times have changed.

Thanks to email, the Internet, and new technologies we now live in the age of instantaneous information. A bimonthly newsletter is no longer the best way to reach SIBA members with up to date news—that task has now fallen to SIBA’s email updates and listserv notices. But we found it impossible to abandon the idea of printing some kind of newsletter. Somehow, we felt that as members of an industry devoted to print, we needed to have a publication that still arrived on paper. We are, as Robert Gray put it in a recent seminar, still quite affectionately “fiber-based”.

So in order to enhance the value of the SIBA newsletter for its members, we have decided to give it an entirely new purpose. Welcome to the first SIBA Newsletter as Toolkit. Each issue will be a collection of marketing tools and techniques for booksellers to copy and use in their stores. Signs, bookmarks, shelf talkers, contest forms, flyers, sample press releases…these are only some of the items that may be included, depending on the time of year and the topic. Each toolkit will have a central theme and will be designed to be taken apart and reproduced as needed. Extra materials will also be available on SIBA’s website. Let us know which “tools” work the best for you, and send SIBA your own ideas and innovative marketing solutions.

Download the June/July 2008 Buy Local Toolkit

Web Extras!