Winter Institute

TikTok cruise or a Cincinnati hotel in February?

Winter Institute (WI) is one of those inside-publishing events that carry enormous importance, but few people know about. It’s coming up in a few weeks, and I’ll be attending.

WI is put on by the American Booksellers Association (ABA), and it’s a wonderful party for independent booksellers—last year, 900 of them showed up. Publishers help fund the event by paying to underwrite keynotes, lunches, receptions, and the like. They do this so they can get their forthcoming lead titles in the hands of booksellers. And many of them have the authors of those books come to the conference as well.

I remember years ago someone mentioning “bringing an author to Winter Institute” and having no idea what that meant. It means being on this program, which includes Hanif Abdurraqib, Rumaan Alam, Laurie Halse Anderson, Rachel Kushner, Jonathan Lethem, Casey McQuiston, Claire Messud, Lydia Millet, Connie Schultz, and—heads up!—Belt’s own Zito Madu (who has the best headshot of them all).

That’s a lot of heavy hitters! If they were all appearing at a public talk or forum many readers would pay money to attend. But they are all going to a trade show, and what all these authors have in common are a book that will be published soon and a publisher with the funds to pay to have them appear on the program. It’s not cheap—-not at all cheap—to bring an author to Winter Institute (on Belt’s presence there this year, I will fill you in on soon). Think a medical conference where doctors are wined and dined by pharmaceutical reps.

During the conference, these authors appear at various events, including receptions where they are on hand to talk about their books, and sign galleys, for the booksellers attending. There is also an infamous “galley room” (pictured below) where publishers send stacks of their forthcoming titles for booksellers to pick and choose from, and take home, for free (for the sellers, of course; for publishers this involves a significant outlay of money too). There are also “Rep Picks Speed Dating” events at which sales reps whose publishers are sponsoring WI hype certain titles to booksellers, fast. And Publishers Weekly has a special PW Preview to tell those not in attendance about the chosen books and authors.

In between, there are sessions for booksellers, including information on how to start your own bookstore, labor trends, how to use Edelweiss, and many other sessions that make bookselling seem, well, hard and dull, which of course it is (as well as fun and exciting).

There will also be an Indie Press Summit (at which I will be a panelist! On a session on Ohio and books!) which is exciting, especially because one of the subtexts to this newsletter is that Winter Institute, as cool and fun as it is, is also an example of the rich (presses) getting richer, of the chosen-to-be-hyped books get even more hyped, leaving hundreds, thousands of authors whose books weren't chosen by their publishers receiving even less oxygen in the too-competitive, expensive world of getting the word out about forthcoming titles, and dozens of small presses with killer catalogs having no presence. The TikTok influencer on a cruise paid for by Atria got a lot of (bad) attention, but Winter Institute has been there all along.

Still, I’m stoked to be going. The conference will be in Cincinnati this year. That’s where it was supposed to be in 2022, and Eric Obenauf and the folks at Columbus’ Two Dollar Radio were organizing some fun events to highlight Ohio presses and bookstores, to happen just before or after WI. It was a great idea, and a unique kind of community-building, and I was really looking forward to participating and meeting all sorts of folks for the first time (and also leaving my house). Unfortunately, it was cancelled. Two years later many things are different, but I am just as excited it will be in Cincinnati, and just as sad that so many great presses and authors won’t be there.

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January sale! $16 for the year if you sign up using this link.

I’ve had some queries re: my next book proposal course, so I’ve set one up for early summer. Hope that date works for those who are interested in joining.

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