Bookstores (and Exhibitors) Win Big at NVNR 2026

Two bookstores won big at the first NVNR Buyer’s Raffle on August 4. GG’s Library in Charleston, SC, and People’s Book in Takoma Park, MD, each won a $1,000 cash prize by placing orders on the exhibit floor during the NVNR 2026 conference.

The Buyer’s Raffle, familiar to SIBA bookstores from pre-pandemic trade shows, was created to encourage bookstores to meet their reps, place orders, and do business. Exhibitors receive raffle tickets to hand out, which they give to bookstores when they place an order. The tickets go into a drawing just before the exhibit floor closes, and a ticket is drawn for one SIBA bookstore and one NAIBA bookstore.

As an incentive to place orders on the exhibit floor, the NVNR Buyer’s Raffle was a success. Ninety-nine raffle tickets were collected from bookstores, each representing an order placed at the conference. Fourteen SIBA stores and twenty-six NAIBA stores turned in tickets, some turning in as many as five different tickets from orders with different vendors. Twenty-six exhibitors, a little over a third of the exhibiting companies, wrote orders for the raffle. Over half the orders were placed with exhibiting sidelines companies.

Every order is the start of a relationship, so exhibitors were also recognized in the raffle. "The best thing was how engaged the booksellers were during the vending times!" said one exhibitor in the feedback survey. "I felt like many of them were eager to be introduced to a new brand and they were all so friendly." The exhibitors who wrote the orders for the winning tickets will receive a $1,000 discount on an exhibit table for 2027.  Southern Territory Associates and Chesapeake and Hudson were the 2026 exhibiting winners of the Buyer’s Raffle.