Spread over three days from midday Saturday to midday Monday, the centenary BookPeople Conference was a feast of fabulous ideas inspired by authors, publishers, editors and fellow booksellers. We (Sarah and Sally) have come back bursting with enthusiasm and incubating many new ‘bookish’ projects, as well as suitcases weighed down by numerous reading copies of books to be published between now and the end of the year. Staff are avidly reading their way through these titles!
Writers featured at the conference included: Robbie Arnott, Jacqueline Bublitz, Gina Chick, Michael Robothom, Nardi Simpson, Christos Tsiolkas, and Tim Winton.
As an add-on, Sarah and Sally were also treated to a visit to the Australasian book distribution centre for Penguin Random House (PRH). This probably doesn’t sound very ‘treat-like’ to you, but it was mind-boggling for us, and we learned a lot. Most notably, PRH and their parent company are currently investing buckets of money into a new purpose-built distribution facility with a footprint of 3 hectares - opening in 2025. This investment reflects great confidence in the future of the book trade and bookselling. Very encouraging!
Following the conference, Sarah was the guest of Readings Carlton and spent two days in their vast and fabulous central city store. Meanwhile, Sally was at Avenue Bookstore and visited all three of their shops, in Albert Park, Richmond and Elsternwick. We’re very grateful to the host stores for this experience and to Booksellers NZ for organising the visits.
|