The Booksellers Association: The facts

Bookselling has become a threatened occupation in twenty-first century Britain. Booksellers Association have been formed in most countries in the world to establish professional standards for bookshop owners. These bookshops have become threatened with extinction, but booksellers have regrouped on the Internet and formed a Booksellers Association. This article provides you with an overview of the Booksellers Association.

Booksellers as store owners

Bookstores have declined in the UK in the last three decades. Most towns do have independent booksellers as well as the major chains, such as Waterstone's. However, these shops have been gradually closing down, all across the country. Booksellers Association
These have been active forces in the maintaining of trading standards and even pricing practices for books sold in the UK. They provide publishing news and book sales trends' information to members, through publications for and about the book trade. Independent booksellers
Independent booksellers use their booksellers association to combine resources, such as providing central warehousing, compatible computer cataloguing and rapid response for delivering individual orders.

Online Booksellers Association

The Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA) established in 1999, has a website at Ioba.org. Bookselling was one of the first retail industries to go global via the Internet in the 1990s. Many small independent traders in rare books began to use the web to display their catalogues, and eventually pictures of their stock. Association ethics
Meeting the needs of the growing number of booksellers online, IOBA established a code of ethics. It also created an assertion of traditional and professional standards that members sign up to. Directory
Its directory has many UK businesses listed, but also booksellers across Europe and USA.

Second-hand books

Entire towns have had their economies revived by turning them into book towns. Since then, Richard Booth set up his first store in Hay on Wye, on the border of England and Wales, in the 1970s. Hay became world famous for its many independent book dealers, trading from its old shops in the shadow of the castle. Thousands flock there hoping to find a rare book or an out-of-print title. Hay on Wye booksellers
It is by forming the Booksellers Association that Hay on Wye's booksellers continue in business, for they have built up vast warehouses of stock of used books and rare books. They sell many more online than over the counter. So, the IOBA could be seen as ideal for them.