MidAtlantic Book Publishers Association

By MBPA board member Mary Shafer

On April 3-4, I had the privilege of representing MBPA at the third annual PMA Affiliate Retreat, held at the Marriott Nashville At Vanderbilt. Surrounded by the beauty of the Southern university campus coming alive in springtime, I joined representatives of ten other PMA affiliate groups and five PMA board members for an intense day-and-a-half of brainstorming, sharing and a bit of laughter…all in the service of improving our Affiliate experience.

We first met on Thursday around 3:00 to take in a warm welcome from organizers Carlene Sippola of Whole Person Associates in Duluth, Minn., and PMA president Florrie Binford Kichler. In a round of introductions, I met my compatriots for the retreat.

Betsy Wright-Lampe, president and editorial director of Rainbow Books, Inc., sat to my right, representing the Florida Publishers Association. What a ball of fire! Not only did she bring us all coconut treats from the Sunshine State, she also generously handed out CDs containing digital documents created for FPA use, with permission to use them for our own purposes.

Similarly, Pat Morris of the Midwest Independent Publishers Association passed out copies of her group’s Call for Entries for their annual regional book awards competition, among other documents she encouraged us to copy and use for our own efforts.
Patricia Fry was a wealth of knowledge in handling aspects of a national coverage group, as she shared her approach to marketing SPAWN, the Small Publishers and Writers Network.

Brian Jud, of “Beyond the Bookstore” fame, proved to be a continuous “Johnny on the Spot,” with relevant anecdotes from his involvement with the Connecticut Area Publishers Association. Similarly, Paulette Ensign, the “Booklet Queen” and vice president of Publishers & Writers of San Diego, shared examples of many of the concepts we would be discussing over the next days.

Doris Baker inspired us all with samples of the printed member catalog and the program/catalog from the annual book awards sponsored by her organization, the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. How CIPA has managed to build itself into a vital group more than 300 members strong is an amazing story of energy, enthusiasm and a lot of just plain hard work that has truly paid off in spades for its members.

Bill Fessler of neighboring Arizona Book Publishers Association also shared the tremendous commitment of his group, which is spread out over an area larger than ours. ABPA members live in the sprawling southwest state, and some of them drive three hours to attend meetings of their fellow publishers.

Marv Mitchell shared strategies for success used by the North West Association of Book Publishers, while Jack Crowl explained how he and his compatriots from the Independent Publishers of New England overcome the challenges of rugged terrain and frequent bad weather to still connect with each other on a regular basis.

Sue Sylvia lent considerable experience to the discussion, sharing strategies used by her successful affiliate, the St. Louis Publishers Association. Frank Gromling, another FPA member, gave a great presentation on the importance of communication.

Bob Goodman, a colleague of Paulette’s, not only added detail to some of her stories, but also brought his experience as a PMA board member to the discussion. And Nancy Stewart, another PMA board member, gave a brief presentation on working with Ingram, her employer, for book distribution.

This understanding and delightful group made it easy for me to share the struggles MBPA has experienced. Their enthusiasm and generosity gave me an injection of confidence that we can take this group wherever we want to go, if we can get enough members interested and involved. I truly believe we can.

We spent the next couple hours brainstorming concerns and issues for discussion and creating the agenda for the following day’s in-depth roundtable. Then we examined the PMA/affiliate relationship in a frank and interesting discussion of what our national organization does well, and how it could stand to improve. The discussion continued on into dinner as we enjoyed the marvelous food at a nearby restaurant and hashed over the many challenges of being small publishers, and what we could expect to get out of—and to give to—our affiliate associations.

Thus fortified and bonded, we met again early on Friday to enjoy a nice breakfast and get to work on discussing all the topics we’d identified the day before. We began by discussing the challenges of building and maintaining membership. We covered recruiting, dues, retention and overcoming the challenges of having a geographically spread-out membership.

This is probably MBPA’s single largest challenge to date, but we’re not alone. I’d say more than half of the organizations represented at the retreat are struggling with the same issue, and most of them are dealing very successfully with it by taking a regional approach to in-person meetings, while maintaining everyday connections through e-mail, web-based discussion boards and listservs, teleconferencing and web-based videoconferencing. If I brought nothing else back from the event, this alone was worth the trip…but I definitely brought back more!

The rest of the day, participants shared how they deal with meetings—their structure, scheduling and technology used; event promotion and marketing; catalogs and newsletters; legal and liability issues; working with interns; regional book awards competitions; websites and related technology; alliances with other organizations; committees; leadership and transition; censorship; and financial viability.

All these topics were incredibly interesting, and the suggestions helpful. Most of all, the support and encouragement I received was tremendously energizing, and I can’t wait to share it all with the rest of the MBPA board when we meet later this month. I just know there’s a great future waiting for us to claim it!

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