People Love Pittsburgh: Takeaways from NAIBA Fall Conference

“People love Pittsburgh.” This was Janet Potter’s biggest takeaway from this year’s New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association’s Fall Conference, even though the show was held in downtown Baltimore.

Here, Janet discusses her first impressions of NAIBA’s annual fall conference, the effects of having a short 4-hour window for exhibition, and the importance of “handing someone a book and telling them why you love it.”

What was your primary objective for attending NAIBA?

I was at NAIBA to get booksellers fired up about Civil War Battlefields: Then and Now, the perfect holiday gift for the history buff in your life. It’s a steal at $19.95!

My colleague Aaron Howe and I both attended NAIBA this year, and while he was representing IPG at large, I was there on behalf of Pavilion Books. Pavilion publishes the bestselling Then and Now series — coffee table books that pair archive photographs of a city’s landmarks with contemporary photographs of the same site today — as well as the Lost series, which celebrate historically or architecturally significant sites that have been lost to time, natural disaster, or tastefully appointed condominiums. There are about 50 books in both series, and I’d brought along several that focus on cities within NAIBA – New York, Brooklyn, Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

What makes NAIBA unique, and how was this year’s show different from others you’ve been to in the past?

This was my first time at NAIBA, but it differs from some of the shows I’ve been to in the past in that the exhibit hall (where we get to show off all our exemplary books) is only open for 4 hours, so the booksellers are on a tear. Conversations can be shorter than on more leisurely show floors, but it also means the booksellers step up to your table and give you their full attention for 30-45 seconds, because they don’t want to miss anything in their limited time.

What was the show’s biggest success, in your opinion?

No matter how many catalogs you print, emails you send, or ads you books — all of which are valuable — nothing will ever top handing someone a book and telling them why you love it. I like to think Aaron and I convinced a lot of booksellers to give books a try that they would have passed over in a catalog, and building relationships with independent booksellers is mutually beneficial…and fun! I’ll never regret 4 hours I get to spend talking to book people, whether it be those you’ve known over email for years, or someone who will open their bookstore in a few months. I got to talk to a bookstore-owning couple from Virginia whose daughter and I went to college together; and Mark Laramboise (of Politics & Prose) and I were both guests on the Best Books of 2015 episode of WBUR’s On Point, each in separate studios in our respective cities, and we got to meet in person for the first time.

What was your main takeaway?

People love Pittsburgh. I mean, they love it. Pittsburgh Then and Now was sitting on our table, and so many people would see it and gasp. “My parents used to live in Pittsburgh,” they’d say, or “I was born in Pittsburgh, even though I grew up in Newark.” Although everyone is excited to see a Then and Now title about their hometown, the Pittsburghers took it to another level. “People from Pittsburgh have so much civic pride!” I said to one lady who was clutching the book to her chest. She locked me in a steely gaze, murmured “Of course we do,” and was gone.