Want to know about the books industry? Ask a bookseller. Experienced booksellers have a world of knowledge about what sales numbers mean, how readers pick books, the ideal author event, and how authors, editors, and booksellers can be each other’s best supporters. In this talk, we’ll cover what you learn about publishing from the other side of the desk—and how to apply it so everybody wins.

About Leah Bobet:

I’m a novelist, editor, and reviewer in speculative fiction, literary, and YA spaces. The novels are YA and have won the Aurora, the Sunburst, and Copper Cylinder Awards; one was nominated for the Andre Norton Award. The short fiction is mostly adult genre work and has been reprinted in a few Year’s Best anthologies and junior high-level textbooks; the poetry mostly literary work at this point. I’ve given talks, panel discussions, readings, and keynotes at literary festivals, professional conferences, schools, libraries, and bookstore events across North America–including guest lectures at the University of Guelph’s creative writing program, Humber College’s media arts program, Houston Writefest, and the Canadian Authors Association’s CanWrite! conference. I’ve also participated in panel discussions on creative writing at CANSCAIP’s Packaging Your Imagination conference and the Tucson Festival of Books, and hosted stages a few times at Toronto’s Word on the Street festival.

I was a founding editor of Abyss & Apex Magazine, editor and publisher of Ideomancer Speculative Fiction from 2008 to 2015, guest poetry editor for Reckoning 5, and a staff writer with Shadow Unit from 2008 to 2014, and spent ten years on staff as a specialty bookseller at Toronto’s Bakka Phoenix Books.