No snow today, but as Izzy from Batch said to me this morning, wouldn’t it be great if we got snowed in? We’re here, we have plenty of books to read, so why not just get snowed in for a few extra days? It’s a nice sentiment. We’re supposed to get snow here again, but I don’t think it’ll be enough to ground my Friday flight.
I’m in Pittsburgh for Winter Institute 2026, presented by the American Booksellers Association. And what a ride it has been. So many people to meet, so many things to learn. Tuesday morning started with a very long line of people waiting to board one of two very slow elevators into the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Seriously, DLCC. This can’t be a new problem.
It’s About People
But the elevator situation was quickly forgotten, because any day that begins with a LeVar Burton keynote is a good day. No, a great day. What a guy. But I have to back up a bit.
As this is my first Winter Institute, I signed up for the Buddy Program, a way for us newcomers to feel a little less lost. Prior to the conference, I met with my Buddy Program group over Zoom, and our guide, Carrie Koepke from Skylark Bookshop, gave us a rundown of what to expect and answered any questions we might have. This morning, the group met at table 18 in the Spirit of Pittsburgh ballroom for a buffet breakfast and the opening keynote address.
I doubt I need to explain who LeVar Burton is to anyone reading this. Kunta Kinte, Geordi La Forge, Reading Rainbow. You know who he is.
I wasn’t a Reading Rainbow kid. I just barely missed that window, really, since it debuted when I was eight years old. Had it started a few years prior, I’m sure it would have been right up my alley. I grew up on Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, which explains a lot about me. That said, Reading Rainbow has probably been the most consequential kids’ show of my lifetime, and I do regret my birth year just a wee bit because of that.
LeVar was in conversation with Janet Webster Jones of Source Booksellers in Detroit. Ms. Janet has a stage presence that I think many professional actors would envy. They discussed LeVar’s acting career, the power and importance of books and reading, and the power of representation. He said, “I think the honor of my life is to have been able to portray the Black experience in America from our enslavement to the stars. And when you consider that LeVar, the Reading Rainbow guy, is in the middle of that continuum, I know why I’m here.”
LeVar ended with a reminder that Pittsburgh was the home of Fred Rogers. “You’re in his neighborhood,” he said. “Act accordingly.” Yes, sir.
After the keynote, I met with Donna Paz Kaufman, from Paz & Associates – the Bookstore Training Group. Their training has been invaluable as I get Multiversity on its feet, but I had a burning question for Donna. All the bookstore training has been great, and here I am at a booksellers conference, but my shop isn’t just books. Typically, a bookstore will deal in books and sidelines, everything that’s not a book. That might be stickers or bookmarks, it might be magazines or gifts. A bookstore might be 95% books and 5% sidelines, give or take. Multiversity will be more like 65%–70% books with the balance made up of comics, games, and collectibles—hardly what is normally considered sidelines. Donna had great advice about operating a shop like that, and I have two pages of notes to pore through when I get home. Also… okay. The question of coffee. When I polled the community last fall about a bookstore for the League City area, most people said they want coffee. I cannot promise that’ll happen, BUT Donna gave me a really good solution that I think people will like. I’ll have more about that for you as plans solidify.
I also had a fantastic meeting with Warwick Schaffer from Circle POS, and I can confidently say that barring any major unforeseen issues, that will be Multiversity’s POS system. It’s a modern, full-featured, cloud-based inventory management and point-of-sale system at a reasonable cost. The demo blew me away.
One of the foundational activities of Winter Institute is Rep Picks Speed Dating, which was a lot of fun. I was assigned to the SFF-appropriate table 42 along with seven or eight other booksellers. A publisher representative would have a seat at our table, pitch us upcoming titles for 15 minutes, and then move on to another table. We saw twelve reps, three per session, over four sessions. And man, could these reps sell. Every one of them, to a person, was passionate and persuasive to the point where I even wanted to order books that have absolutely no place in my science fiction & fantasy shop! By far, the best fit for us was Podium Entertainment, repped by Matt Parkinson. Every title was a banger, and you can be sure you’ll find a lot of Podium books on our shelves when we open this fall.
Back to the Classroom
Understanding Publisher Economics might’ve been my favorite educational session of the conference so far. Hearing firsthand from independent publishers was eye-opening. If you think rising cover prices means publishers are swimming in cash, think again. The reported average profit to the publisher is just 2–4 cents per dollar of the cover price. Hardly Scrooge McDuckian numbers. I doubt even one of them has a vault full of gold coins to swim in.
And a significant expense to the publishers is the production of galleys and ARCs – Advance Reading Copies. These books, often uncorrected and early in the production stages, can cost several dollars per unit to produce. Publishers bring cartons full of them to Winter Institute, they’re available upon request throughout the year, and while they’re important to the success of a title, they’re not cheap to make! Another cost I hadn’t considered? Touring an author can cost the publisher, on average, $2,000 per city. Most titles sell fewer than a few thousand copies in their lifespan, and publishers count on having just a few big hits per year to support the rest of their list.
Speaking of educational sessions, I would have liked to attend the Building Your Bookstore’s Media Presence and Author Events and Censorship sessions, but the elevator doesn’t want me to. The elevators at DLCC are cursed, I’m convinced. I mentioned the two that connect the convention hall to the hotel, and there are only two others within the conference area. Each one serves one half the hall, but one has been out of service since I’ve been here. The only way, then, to get from one end of the hall to the other on the fourth floor is via the outdoor sky bridge that connects the halves. Which was closed due to ice this morning. Making that half of the hall inaccessible to me, because I can’t use escalators. Luckily, all sessions at Winter Institute are recorded and posted online for attendees.
And this is just a fraction of what I’ve done in Pittsburgh for the last two days. One more to go, and then the real work begins!
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