RAMP Summer & Winter Catalogs
RAMP is a marketing, sales, and production group managing the two seasonal (summer and winter) catalogs for bookstores in four regions, including NAIBA. Our catalogs are the Indie Summer Reading Guide and the Winter Catalog.
Publishers: Orders are OPEN for ad placement in our Winter Catalog! Click here for details, including our new Early Booking Bonus, and to reserve your ads.
Booksellers: Indie Summer Reading Guide (formerly known as the summer catalog) orders are closed. The Winter Catalog (formerly known as the holiday catalog) orders will open soon!
Below are special considerations from NAIBA for using the winter catalog. These deals are handled outside the system for ordering your supply of catalogs.
NAIBA offers a $50 credit on your next membership renewal to any member store that sends us photos of catalog displays, newsletter articles featuring the winter catalog, social media screenshots, etc. Email us proof of in-store and online promotions of the catalog titles.
More ideas on how to make the most of your catalogs:
- Use our direct/saturation mail option for your winter catalog.
- Imprint your winter catalog with your store info AND a coupon..
- Insert in local papers.
- Mail to customers.
- Mail to top 20-50 customers with a handwritten appreciation note.
- Place with community partner businesses/in other retail outlets.
- Stuff in bags.
- Hand out at your events and other community events.
- Bring it to local independent and/or assisted living communities and take orders.
- Have staffers choose a title they think will do well and have a competition to see which title sells the most copies; the winning bookseller gets a prize!
- Build a store display. Carry this throughout the store with mini displays in different sections.
- Send to your school librarians with a handwritten appreciation note and invitation to order.
- Add a QR code to your imprinted catalog that links to your digital page.
- Include it in all special order book shipments and/or subscription boxes.
- And new this year... Prepare your staff to hand-sell by reading the DRCs provided on Edelweiss.
We’ve always used the free allotment of catalogs to give out in the store, as bag stuffers, and to share online. A few years ago I decided to try a mass mailing of the holiday catalog, so we added our branding and a coupon and had it delivered to 10,000 homes in our neighborhood. The first year we got back enough coupons that it seemed like a good return on advertising dollars. This year we’ve seen a huge increase. The big mailing of the catalog is really money well spent--we get hundreds of coupons back!
-Laurie Gilman, East City Bookshop, Washington, DC
We have inserted 9,000 Holiday Catalogs in 2 local papers each year for the last 5 years and hand out another 1,000 in the store. Our customers now look forward to seeing it in their paper the week before Thanksgiving. We have many customers who bring the catalog into the store and tell us what a great job WE did on the catalog!! Haha!!! Thanks NAIBA for this valuable piece of print material!!
-Jen Reisdorf, The Bookworm & BW Gifts, East Aurora, NY
As a brand new, small bookstore, I would not have had the resources to put together this fabulous selection of books, much less handle the creation of the actual catalog. By distributing this catalog we have met many new community members, and I am very grateful for my book selling friends at NAIBA for selecting such fabulous books!
-Kirsten Hess, Let's Play Books, Emmaus, PA
I love the holiday catalog! We had great results. We insert them in our newspaper with a coupon. The response to the coupon was unbelievable, the return rate was terrific. Thank you!
-Glenda Childs, The Doylestown Bookshop, Doylestown, PA
A Likely Story |
Bookends Bookstore & Homeschool Resource Center |
Bookmarks |
Booktenders (WV) |
Browseabout Books |
Bryn Mawr College Bookshop |
Caprichos Books |
East City Bookshop |
Huxley & Hiro |
Lift Bridge Book Shop |
Looker Books |
Main Point Books |
Newtown Bookshop |
Pages & Parchment |
Park Books & LitCoLab |
Snug Books |
Winchester Book Gallery |
Word Up |
How are titles selected for the winter catalog?
- Publishers are the primary decision-makers in what titles are available for advertising in the holiday catalog. We have a good relationship with our publishing partners who tend to know our market, know what books they have marketing budgets for, and propose books accordingly.
- Booksellers are invited to nominate titles every year. The call for titles is sent via emails and posted on our website.
- If a title seems questionable to the indie market, a conversation may take place with the publisher; we always keep an eye on free speech and free press, and respect to diversity and content in every way.
- Title lists are on the NAIBA website well in advance of catalog publication for review by booksellers. (Links are provided in the organization newsletter.) If a title seems objectionable, booksellers are welcome to contact NAIBA before catalog publication.
- Free speech extends to titles and viewpoints an individual bookseller might not agree with.
See catalogs from previous years
Download the 2024 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2023 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2022 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2021 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2020 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2019 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2018 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2017 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2016 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2015 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2014 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2013 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2012 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2011 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2010 NAIBA Holiday Catalog
- Download the 2009 NAIBA Holiday Catalog