speakers. on june 11, we will have hollywood writer, director m. night shaman on who will discuss his campaign to close america's education achievement gap. august 1 we will have other speakers in the interim but on august 1 we have confirmation will have the president of the republic of congo who will discuss peace, security and stability of the central african region, and oil investments in his country. now i'd like to present our cup, we would like to present our guest with a traditional national press club mug. doctor carson, if you make multiple visits you get multiple cops. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> our final question. what is your favorite book that is not the bible or one of your

own books? [laughter] >> i'm going to tickle you with this. it was the first book that i ever read. it was called chip the dam builder. [laughter] >> it was about a beaver. it was really what started me on my journey of reading. i mean, this beaver was so wise, and he made the birchbark seemed so tasty i wanted to eat one myself. but it really sort of got my imagination stimulated, and i read every animal book in the public library and that would to the downtown branch. i read all those animal books. then i started reading about plants and the mr. reading about rocks because we didn't have a railroad -- because we lived along the railroad tracks.

presume to identify any rock, how was formed home -- how a was formed. one day the teacher came in, held at the big rock and sickeningly to do with this is. i never raised my hand. i waited for one of the smart kids to raise their hand. nobody did. i waited for one of them kids to raise their hand. nobody -- celebrities by name. ground. they couldn't believe, this is going to be good. the teacher called on me, and i said that's at city in? there was silence in the room. a lot of close down its the water and the elements -- everybody was staring at me. but i was most amazed person in the room because it dawned on me at that moment that i was no dummy. and that the reason i knew those answers because i was reading

those books. and from that point forward you couldn't get a book out of my hand but my mother would say put the book down and eat your food. it didn't matter. it completely transformed my life and that's the reason that we are so passionate about getting our young people to read now and to value education. because that is what will save our nation. thank you. [applause] >> we are running out of time. i'd like to remind everybody to remain seated so that we can get dr. carson to the lounge where you will be pleased to sign copies of his new book, co-authored with his wife. and there are still copies available outside in the

ballroom corridors. i'd also like to thank national press club staff, including its broadcast center for organizing today's event. also if you would like to get a copy of today's program or to get more information about the national press club, please check out our website at rest.org. thank you all for being here today. thank you again, dr. carson. we are adjourned. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching tv, nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. booktv's coverage of the book expo america continues with a panel discussion on the future brick and mortar retailers. this is about 50 minutes.

>> [inaudible conversations] >> so first of all thank you all for joining us today. this is the most exciting. it is a most remarkable time in her industry. i am so excited to have you join us at trenton. -- "the future of bricks and mortar retailers." this year, the keynote, the founder of caruso affiliates said we are part of the rebirth of brick-and-mortar retail. we are living in a moment of great change, surrounded by exciting technology.

it's easy to get distracted by the conversation, around in it versus bricks and mortar. but now more than ever what we need to do is to focus on what has always been and will always be essential to the customer. creating an experience that's magical and memorable. so those of us who love books, bookstores and book sellers have always been magical and memorable. today we're going to talk to some great booksellers about creating great customer experiences and the future of brick-and-mortar retailing. whether you're a retailer, an author or a publisher the our new ways to come at the business, and we hope to share some of those with you today. so let me introduce the panel. we are going to start from might be meet left, a person who many of you will know, oren teicher, chief executive of officer of immigrant booksellers

association, a national trade association for independent booksellers and he has been working on behalf of independent book shores for more 20. directly to his left is michael tamblyn, president of kobo, global the reading device, that powers chains and in this rather were put before joining kobo he was founder and ceo of book net candidate. directly to his left you a seat john ingram. john is the chairman and ceo of ingram content group, the world's largest distributor of physical and digital content. john also serves as the chairman of ingram industries board of directors. next to him you'll see joyce meskis who is the owner and has been the owner and president of tattered cover bookstore, one of the great bookstores in america, the nation's national recognize independent bookstores since 1974. she has long been active in the american booksellers association. and then directly to her left you will see mike hesselbach who

is the executive of president and cm oh for readerlink. mike has been with readerlink for 19 years, and before that was with american greeting for 15 years. and talking to mike on the phone this week, his comment, his real passion for retailing but i think all of these people have a real passion for retail and a passion for book retail specifically what is the book, and i'm incredibly excited to talk to them about his future. so we will start right away and we're going to talk about the in store experience. i think all of us know that e-commerce and mobile devices have made significant strides in the past two years but they can never really replace the in store personal experience. one of the questions i asked the panelists, and the along with some questions -- we had to win

of them down there were so many, i asked what are some really rate examples of wha what you ae doing, what you're seeing other people do with respect to enhancing the in store shopping experience? we're going to start directly to my left with oren. write down this aisle. >> good afternoon. i think the first thing and probably the most important thing i can say about independent retail in the book business that not only are we still here, there are more of us here, and the resurgence in the bookselling israel. as many of you may have seen, we will announce tomorrow at the aba annual town hall meeting that for the first time since 2005 the american booksellers association members operate in more than 2000 locations across the country.

we know there is a popular narrative out there, often that attaches a word beleaguered to independent stores. the facts are quite contrary. we are actually experience a resurgence in the stores because they are create an experience that consumers are responding to our absolutely alive and well and making a real difference in treating experience for consumers that is fun, exciting and compelling. >> i'll probably take a much more statistical approach to this in almost all of these, while i also commend independent bookselling and then chain physical bookselling as well, it's been all of my time working with e-books being sold through and in the context of bricks and mortar stores. we spent all of them looking at

the differences between the two, how are bricks and mortar stores selling different things than what e-book buyers by. and to talk about your question in real pointed detail, what the difference, where do we see that split taking place. that idea of the true browsing experience, the lateral and random walk through a store that so many of us do to find the books that we love, still remains almost entirely physical retail experience. and we see it in the data. people know what the want to buy. they're good at buying them in digital but if you don't know what they want, we'll see the same kind of sales that you would see in the store because it isn't that same casting your eyes across tables and chairs and finding that accidental treasure. while we're working like crazy to try to dream of things that will help replicate that, we are

nowhere near there. it is fundamentally a physical store experience. >> john, what are some great examples you are seeing? >> thank you. it makes want to jump to some of the things we talked about, dominique, you know, to me is really about engaging community and it's about innovation. those are the key things the days of just doing what you used to do and it being good enough doesn't work anymore. we will probably get into that later. joe mickey get into it now or -- we will do that a little later but i think those are some the things that you all are probably doing because you are still here. i think some of the keys, but we will let joyce say something specific and catch those later. >> there certainly is a renaissance of spirit in the independent community, and as a

look in the audience and see some of my fellow and brother and sister colleagues, it is certainly the case that everyone is working as hard as they possibly can to engage because, not only once they come in to the store with merchandising and events, but how do you get them into the store for that matter. in thinking about how we deal with the e-books and i went on, which has leveled out by the way in terms of a lease in our experience with respect to people using the devices and the absolutely increase incremental sales that we were seeing a year or two or three or four ago, we have really seen it level out at this point. and people are back into the stores for the experience that they know and love.

and as i think about what we can do for them to bring them back, as an example, it's hard to get a computer screen to pour a glass of wine for you when you come to our book happy hour at the tattered cover. it's hard during book and lovers day to extend that rose into the hands of the customer who wants to give something special to a loved one, for example. it's hard to have your child engaged with others in their pajamas on family-friendly friday nights to hear stories and author reads and other kinds of those events, that are

impossible to create with the digital device. and the customer wants to feel appreciated, loved, and given information that they seek. there's no question about it. it's also a matter of engaging the community to participate in the world of books, the media certainly, if a nonbook events, to bring the customer into the store, and then we look to the merchandising opportunities that we have for the customer to make a purchase. so i'll leave it at that for the moment and continue on. >> mike, i think your stores are very different and i know you've worked very hard to create a very calm a more engaging look section, a section that actually draws customers that as more of

an experience. perhaps you could talk about that. >> we're a bit jealous because people who come in to your stores and into the independent, they're coming they're to buy books, to look at books. in our case most of the people coming into our retail outlets are not coming in to buy books. we sell a lot of books because they stumble upon them, but in essence they are there to buy something else. they are there to buy their groceries, they there to get their prescriptions filled. but what we really found out is that just like you guys, we have to figure out how to engage in as quickly as possible as they enter the store. so we tried to create some exciting displays. we tried to put the newest releases up by the front door so that we at least have an opportunity to get some state of mind of the books are in the stores. we worked with random house and read across america to make sues an event.

we booked other events but the truth of the matter is way to make the department looked a little different. or catch that consumers i, because we don't have the privilege of having a buy in the store really hands on anything for us. so we utilize all of these types of things, cross promotions, you know, with legos over in the toy aisle, with lego toys trying to get sort of that mindset of what people are into shop for already and try to leverage that into books. >> super. i'm going to go deeper into the committed aspect that choice and oren started talking about because i think we've all done a tremendous amount of work in our community and really the best independence really foster that. said joyce, to want to talk a bit about, you and i were on the phone, i was staggered on a seat at the amount of events and the amount of things you're talking about. how do you connect better?

how have you seen stores work better to connect with their local communities? >> so let me go to the list a bit. and many of you here in the audience know some of these things very well, better than i do. so you will bring that i hope to the table as well as we move through this panel. but as i was talking to dominique, i was talking about gathering the media, for instance, into our world, using it to the extent possible. they are looking for stories all the time. that's true whether you're in a small town community or a large town community. and you can be part of that story, that they need. and that is very, very important. public radio, as far as we concerned, is one of our top interests in connecting with the

community. we also have a series and have actually done this for a number of years, called a planned series. and in colorado of course we are very concerned about ecological matters and things geographic because of our mountains and our geographical place in the world. and that draws many people over time to the different authors and books that we feature. taking that as a niche, for instance, in terms of promotion to our committee at large speed is really regional. >> yes. we have writers responded to readers, and all day event, one of the few things were actually charge money for, that we sell out the tickets with i think when hundred 25 that we can accommodate for an all day series of others, for folks,

that will come in and spend their saturdays with us. and we sell out in minutes, as soon as they go on sale. bookclub happy hour i mentioned a little earlier. once we get the folks in the store, we have a very impressive book selection that is on display, merchandising. autograph book club, the old favorite of books for summer kids reading programs and i see steven the back of the room, and talk about an incredible summer kids program. he certainly has developed one in austin, which is remarkable where kids go to summer camp for books actually. and it's wonderful. >> i think he called it a book at camp? >> book camp spirit that came up by the way, a number mentioned it.

>> right. again, the relationship with local media for free promotional events, book reviews in local papers, the neighborhood of the, colorado public radio in our case, the local bookclub on one of the radio stations that feature a lot of our promotional titles. podcasts, as far as authors go, certainly some that we have at our store but also tapping into what's being done out there in the world in terms of being able to pull it into your own website. writers groups, we also have a colorado opera come in and do some educational events as well

as paid to the stage which has to do with the local denver group that puts on plays. the libraries, of course, local colleges. i see chuck and be in the audience and i know they've done amazing things with their collaboration with the local college, and groups that they work with. certainly the schools, giving tours to kids, telling them how a book gets published, other kinds of tours for special interest. >> so in total how many events does pattered run in a your? >> between five and 600. >> i wanted you guys to get that number because when she told me that, i was just stunned, right? okay. so pretty remarkable. john -- all, you wanted to talk about that, oren? go ahead.

>> dominica, your comment about the localism movement and connection to communities, it's a little unnecessary to mind a group of largely independent booksellers that the localism movement in america has changed everything. not just for bookstores. there are literally millions, and i mean millions of consumers every day who are making decisions to spend their dollars and locally independent business as it is a locally independent business. that are booksellers in this room who have been at the forefront of creating their local shop local in the committee but that has mushroomed across the country. i know many of you are familiar with the promotion the american express did in november in conjunction with an event that they created calling it small business saturday. did you know that on that single day, on one day, $5.7 billion

was spent an independent businesses across the united states. i joke that bookstores got some of it. we didn't get all of it, but it is, it's no longer just the imagination of a few people. the interconnection between local businesses to build community, for those businesses to work together to cross market, to cross merchandise, to come up with ways in which they can get a better response from their consumer, what we know, all the data always shows that if you shop and one independentt business, you're more likely to shop in another independent business. so those partnerships that other local stores pay off and make an incredible difference i think is absolutely at the center of what

our members are doing better. >> john, i think you had some comments about this as well. >> yeah, i think, i think what you're really talking about, in order to get into one word it would be relevance. it's what we all seek in one way or another. how to be relevant to your community. back to steve at book people, it's not only reading camps but tapping into the local technology culture. keep austin weird campaign, he's got a new it, keep austin eating probably tapping into the restaurant scene and whatnot. foals are really clever. there are a lot of examples kind of across the country of independence tapping and trying to be relevant in their community. for instance, word bookstore in

new jersey as all that special need and really deeply servicing that particular need. not only with the great selection of books, but with education opportunity, employment opportunity. i think this is how, this is how we have to think, that it's broader than just a mandate of selling books. zero beach books and has made friday morning the in place to be for the preschoolers. it's where every friday morning a new great picture book is read to a growing audience and then they did activities afterwards. building the clientele. you can go on and on and on with that. but taking it back in my mind is about how to be relevant and how to be connected. >> so i'm going to move now to a slightly different area, which

is the merchandising in stores. so the data suggests that shifts between digital and physical formats have slowed dominique. i think joyce was just talking about that a little bit. and i would ask my two leaders on this because what i want to know was how has the merchandising mix change in the last few years, and i do see changing in the future? so how are we selling different things that we used as a of what that mean for us going forward? >> again, ours is a little bit different because we are already competing with thousands of different categories in our stores. so within our department, we've had to become more curated. we don't have the space that we might have had five, six years ago, especially around 2009, 2010, the economy wasn't so good. e-books regarding to get some traction.

the region, especially at the c. level of our retailers were looking at books on figure out is this a category they really want to be in. so we had to become more relevant in a smaller footprint. we have really gone after more hardcover and trade paperback sellers, going back to the relevance. it's the things that our consumers recognize when they walked into our stores. vitae ends, the young adult wave -- movie tie-ins. we really go after those very hard. when we get out placement within our retailers, we more than doubled our normal market share of any of those categories. those are the things that our retailers executives look at and say, yeah, this is a really good thing to be in because we can garner that kind of market share. one of the obvious ones is mass market. mass market, we've really got back in selection. we only carry the hardcovers.

it's probably been the hardest hit for us, and personally i didn't really see that happening went e-books were for started talking about. i thought their low price point we should be okay but it was for us the hardest think it. we probably perpetuated a little bit of that because as we look at the space and try to garner the most sales and profitability on the space, it really was the loser. so we probably made that a little bigger than should be. that it has plateaued at this point. we're starting to see comments coming back to flats and we can with the right promotion, we can define. at the obvious winner for us in our market was kids. we have much bigger kids departments. our kids can we probably do 66% more business today than we did five years ago with children's books. because we saw it as one of the things we saw was it was mom and with soccer moms shopping our stores, as we like to call them. they have families and the young

kids, and there's always another new generation of children coming right behind them to buy those books that we all love. and that's what we can get a breath of the assortment. that's what we have more backlist. that's what i think we are helping our retailers to win, least within the next within their own stores. so that's where we see it going. that's what we've done the last five years. i don't think it's going to change for us. we have stopped probably some mass-market decline. we kept its table. we have a nice selection but we are not deep and backlist, not deep and major authors like we used to be. and were going to continue putting more focus on young adult, more focus on children's and continue down that path for motley's our standpoint for our stores. >> does anybody else want to talk about the merchandising mix and its affect? oren?