Guest Speaker: Libba Bray: Ode to Independent Booksellers
On September 17, 2006, at the Breakfast of Champions at the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association trade show in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, author Libba Bray received NAIBA's award for Best Young Adult Book of the publishing year for her novel REBEL ANGELS. Her acceptance speech, titled "Ode to Independent Booksellers," brought waves of applause and dozens of requests for copies. Bray, who worked at an independent bookstore as a teenager in Texas, has given me permission to reprint her speech here. Please forgive me for running two guest posts in a row; I wanted to share this wonderful speech while it is still fresh. Ode to Independent Booksellers Independent booksellers rock. They are a cup of black coffee, straight up no chaser, in a half-caf-vanilla-hazelnut-with-whipped cream kind of world. When you walk up to independent booksellers and say, with deepest apologies, “I’m looking for this new book about the Victorian era and I can’t remember the author’s na...