IOBA to sponsor Virtual Book, Map, and Ephemera Fair

As part of its 25th anniversary celebration, the board of directors of the Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA) recently decided to sponsor a virtual fair featuring rare and collectible books, rare maps and ephemera. The date for the fair is May 2-4, 2024.

IOBA president Richard Erdmann contacted veteran book fair promoter Marvin Getman to partner in promoting the milestone anniversary, knowing that Getman has a large database comprised of collectors, librarians and dealers who attend his regular online book fairs. Erdmann asked if it would be possible for IOBA to sponsor an online book fair on the popular easy to use platform Getman developed at the start of the Pandemic. His virtual fairs have been responsible for almost $7 million in sales and Getman recently said that his fairs are now included in ViaLibri’s rare book search engine. This will be especially good news if you are among the many viaLibri users who let the Libribot automate searching for the items listed on their want lists. If you are signed up with Libribot, you will be notified via email when matches have been found.

For this special anniversary fair, any member of IOBA may exhibit. Any dealer interested in inquiring about IOBA membership may go here: https://www.ioba.org/join-ioba.

The Independent Online Booksellers Association Celebrates 25 Years With a worldwide membership of over 300 independent sellers of rare, used, and new books and ephemera, the Independent Online Booksellers Association marks 25 years of work in 2024. The IOBA is an international non-profit trade organization founded in 1999 to support ethical and professional online bookselling.

For generations prior to the Internet, experienced book dealers had created accurate book descriptions for use in catalogues, using agreed-upon terminology and recognized standards of grading and passing this knowledge down. By 1999, there were online sellers copying the language of professionals, often without knowing what it meant. Others didn’t know enough about the profession to be aware that any specialized terminology or standards existed.

The original founders of the IOBA saw a need to somehow translate this generational standard into the online world. To do so, the IOBA established and is dedicated to maintaining both a Book Buyers Bill of Rights and a Code of Ethics for its members. The IOBA provides scholarships, education, mentoring, and support to its members. Furthermore, it has an ethics committee to investigate any rare complaints from people who buy from IOBA members.

Over the years and today, the IOBA continues to represent independent booksellers. The IOBA formally challenged monopolistic companies like Amazon for its parity pricing pressure in the EU, over a decade before the United States FTC anti-monopoly lawsuit filed in September of 2023. In September of 2023, in light of new censorship under the Texas Reader Act, the IOBA formally endorsed the American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Statement.

For 2024, the organization launched a separate IOBA Foundation, a nonprofit, tax-exempt institution “established for the purpose of providing continuing education for the worldwide community of independent online booksellers, as well as to promote diversity in the trade through scholarships and mentoring opportunities.”

Readers can find information on the IOBA’s continuing work, ethical bookselling, and cautionary tales published in trade magazines on the IOBA website, www.IOBA.org.