Claire Kirch

NAIBA’s second executive director officially took the helm on August 4, during the organization’s annual membership meeting at the New Voices New Rooms conference.

Lit Circle, a digital platform aimed at connecting consumers with bookstores hosting authors and other literary programming, is currently available in Chicago and, as of today, Philadelphia.

A highlight of New Voices New Rooms, the collaboration between the New Atlantic Indie Booksellers Association and Southern Indie Booksellers Alliance, was the Children's Luncheon Panel.

The joint trade show continued with NAIBA and SIBA booksellers checking out publishers’ latest offerings and lauding outgoing NAIBA executive director Eileen Dengler for her decades of service.

In small towns and rural areas, booksellers are opening romance-focused stores that double as community spaces.

The radical left-wing publisher is finding success by crashing titles that address timely topics, including playbooks on combatting the Trump administration’s detention of immigrants and organizing working-class collective action.

Children's Institute 2026 in Schaumburg, Ill. June 26-29 was a whirlwind, with booksellers networking with one another and publishers, as well as authors, plus gathering up books. PW compiled photographs of a few of its memorable memories.

Children's Institute 2026 wound up on Monday afternoon with Lois Lowry introducing booksellers to her September release, a novel set in a dystopian future without books. Children's Institute 2027 will take place in Albuquerque, N.M.

The American Booksellers Association’s annual children’s publishing–focused gathering kicked off on Friday afternoon in Schaumburg, Ill., with the YA category—as well as a proposed “young teen” category—seeming to draw the most attention.

While Albert Whitman, the oldest and most iconic of the Chicagoland children's publishers, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2025, the other publishers in the area producing children's books report financial stability due to strong sales.