Dear Booksellers, Someone asked me this week, “What’s the most important thing I should be doing for my store right now?” The answer: communicate. Communicate with your staff. If they’re not hearing from you, then they may be making incorrect assumptions about what you’re thinking and what you’re planning. If you’re not asking how they’re doing, you may be unaware of concerns they have. And remember that support right now is not one-size-fits-all; we’re all experiencing this crisis differently and taking care of ourselves in different ways. Not to mention that as time goes by, what you need to communicate, and what they need, may be changing. Communicate with publishers. Call your sales and credit reps and give them an update. Let them know your store’s financial and operating status. Even if all you have to say is, “I can't pay my whole bill right now,” start the conversation. Let publishers know if you have alternate addresses where galleys can be shipped. Let them know what you want them to do with your fall order that you placed a lifetime ago. In ABA meetings with publishers this week (which I’ll be reporting on after we finish the meetings next week), communication from the stores was one of the top requests from publishers. Communicate with your customers. IndieCommerce stores that have increased their communication with customers are seeing significant payoff in increased conversion rates and sales. In the past, you may have been hesitant to send too much communication to your customers, but it seems that customers are currently hungry to hear from you, so keep reaching out to them. Book recommendations are especially appreciated right now. Also card and gift reminders and recommendations for upcoming events: Mother’s Day, graduation, Father’s Day. It’s easy to forget that “regular” life is still happening for all of us; you can remind customers of that and assist them with their needs. (Thank you to Avid Bookshop for sending me my order for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, anniversary, sympathy, and birthday cards, and one for a virtual bat mitzvah! All pre-stamped!) Communicate with your landlord. If you talked to them early in the crisis, check in again. If they weren’t willing to offer relief the first time you asked, ask again. Give them an update on your store’s financial and operating status. If you’re worried about staying in business, they should be worried, too. They’d rather hear from you now than when it’s too late. Communicate with authors. Authors with books publishing now would love to hear from you if you or your booksellers have read and loved their books!
Advocacy Updates - Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) tax implication update: On May 6, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators introduced the Small Business Expense Protection Act, which would clarify the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) so small businesses can deduct expenses paid with a forgiven PPP loan from their taxes. The bipartisan group consisted of Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Tom Carper (D-DE). On April 30, an IRS notice declared that businesses that qualify for PPP loan forgiveness cannot deduct wages or other business expenses they paid for with forgiven PPP funds. This new bill would reverse that IRS rule.
- Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) grants and loans explanation: It is important to understand that there are two parts of EIDL: (1) the grant portion of up to $10,000 and (2) the loan portion with an interest rate of 3.75 percent for small businesses and 2.75 percent for non-profits.
EIDL grants are being deposited without notice into the bank accounts businesses listed in their EIDL applications. Due to high demand, the EIDL grants are capped at $1,000 per employee. You will not receive any communication from the Small Business Administration about the grant portion. Continue to check your bank account for this deposited money. Some members have already received this grant. EIDL loans are slowly being processed. These are not forgivable loans. When the EIDL loan portion of your EIDL application is processed, you will receive communication (likely via email) from the SBA indicating if you are approved or denied for a loan. If you are approved for a loan, you’ll be sent to an SBA website to see the loan amount you are approved for. You have the option to accept the approved maximum loan amount, decrease that amount, or reject the loan in its entirety. **Even if you are denied an EIDL loan or decide not to take an EIDL loan, you will not have to repay the EIDL grant portion you received.**
IndieCommerce Stores With Their own Authorize.net Accounts If your store has an IndieCommerce site and you process your own ecommerce credit card transactions via Authorize.net (as in, ABA does not handle your credit card processing through our Authorize.net account), it’s a good idea to check your settings right now. You may not have made any adjustments since you set them. When doing so, please be advised of these additional protections for your account: Log in to Authorize.net and look for “Fraud Detection Suite.” Check the settings found here periodically, and make sure you don’t see excessive declined transactions. If you see more than usual declines, you should enable email notifications for declined transactions to check for patterns. To alert the store (if email notification is enabled in your account profile) if there are more than a certain number of transactions per hour from one IP, which can indicate a bot, enable the “Hour Velocity Filter.” In general, you should enable “Daily Velocity Filter” and set a maximum number of attempts. When this filter is triggered, the action should be “Process as normal and report filter(s) triggered.” Enable the “Suspicious Transaction Filter.”
All IndieCommerce Stores If you see something, say something. If you notice any orders or other activity on your site that seems suspicious to you, please contact ABA at [email protected]. You could save your store and other members from processing fraudulent orders.
Spam Emails [Not] From ABA
Members have reported emails from Michael Patterson and others at easypaybiz(dot)com posing as ABA and selling “ABA B2B professional lists.” This is spam! Binc
A reminder that in addition to COVID-related relief, Binc offers assistance for other emergency needs related to natural disasters, as well as for medical expenses, utility shutoffs, homelessness, funerals, and more. Learn more about the types of assistance Binc offers. On a final note, our thoughts are with Florida bookstores today during the Panhandle wildfires. (Florida, when you can, let us know how you’re doing.) If you have Great American insurance through ABA, you can reach out to Ron Morrison with any questions about your policy. He can be reached at 1-877-589-6846 (Option 1) or his cell at (513) 263-0415. ABA will be reaching out to stores to see if we can help in any way. ABA is here for all of you. Please reach out if there is anything we can help with. We are an incredibly creative, resilient, supportive industry. We’ll get through this, together. Best,
Allison |
