ABA Joins With Publishers to Launch Virtual Reading Series This Fall

The American Booksellers Association’s ABC Children’s Group is working with publishers to present a virtual reading series to facilitate bookstore events for educators, students, and readers during the fall and winter of the 2020–2021 school year.

This upcoming reading series is inspired by the success of the virtual book club that took place this past May with Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped From the Beginning authors Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds, along with Loyalty Bookstores’ Hannah Oliver Depp.

For the upcoming event series, the ABC Group will work with publishers to coordinate the participation of authors and activists and bring them to one virtual stage. The ABC Group will provide all of the event links, marketing materials, and educational resources that bookstores need to create community conversations on social justice, representation, and other topics among local educators, students, and readers of all ages during this unique academic year of a pandemic, social distancing, and homeschooling.

While ABA will coordinate these events for stores, whether a bookstore benefits from them will depend on how much effort they put into marketing both the event and the store to their customer base. 

Registration for these events will be through Eventbrite and will be free to all attendees. There will be an option for attendees to make a donation to the organization of the author’s choice. If there is no preference by the author, donations will be accepted for the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc). 

Watch Bookselling This Week for more details about this upcoming virtual event series.