ABA Chief Warns of a Hard Holiday Supply Chain

Allison K. Hill, CEO of the American Booksellers Association, wrote to booksellers on 28 October 2026 that the rest of the year "promises to be a challenging one for the supply chain," and that "This perfect storm will rival 2020's supply chain disruption," her letter says. This is also, she wrote, "the first full season without Baker & Taylor, meaning Ingram will be carrying a full load of libraries and bookstores for the first time."

What she put on the list

The letter names a labor shortage that makes warehouse hiring hard, ICE in communities, and Amazon's relentless hiring machine. A major US book component printer that many publishers depended on has closed, she wrote. New Canadian tariffs make paper harder and slower to source, add steps at customs, and make timely reprints impossible. Rising fuel prices from the US-Iran war have changed shipping, the letter says.

Ingram "actively improves their operations every year" and is "coming into this season with a couple of much appreciated improvements," the letter says. Even so, she wrote, it will be challenged to keep up. She wrote that "at least one publisher is already actively telling booksellers to order from Ingram instead of direct," that more publishers are sending books to Ingram for print on demand "in anticipation of the challenges this season," and that "there are 500 more independent bookstores than there were this time last year."

Cash, and a card for a late gift

"To mitigate risks for booksellers, publishers have advised them to order early and order more, but cash flow makes this a challenge, as does the unpredictability of how much customers will be able or willing to spend in this challenging economy," the letter says.

"ABA has launched a campaign to get customers shopping early and we've created a recipient card for you to offer your customers when their gift won't arrive in time," Hill wrote. The association is also talking with booksellers who have cash flow issues.

"Despite these significant concerns and the planning and pivoting they will require, this can still be a great holiday season," she wrote in the letter. "You have one more day for shipping and shopping because Thanksgiving falls a day earlier and Christmas a day later." Hanukkah runs from December 4 to 12 this year, which the letter calls good timing for retail sales. "In a tough economy, books can be an affordable gift." She ended with "This is the recipe for a great holiday season, and you all know this recipe by heart."

What Ingram told Shelf Awareness

Phil Ollila, chief content officer of Ingram Content Group, told Shelf Awareness: "We've spent the last year making investments in the entire network--in people, technology, processes, and warehouses, and those investments are coming to fruition now." He added: "Holiday seasons are rarely perfect, but we feel like we're in a great position for this year."

Ingram expanded its library staff, including salespeople, catalogers, and library processing, after Baker & Taylor's collapse a year ago moved that business over, Shelf Awareness reported. Last year, Ollila said, "we used whatever labor we could to help keep up with the volume." This year's library operations "take the pressure" off trade wholesale.

Print on demand opened at the Roseburg, Ore., center, "bringing eight million additional titles west of the Rocky Mountains," he told Shelf Awareness. Ingram now has national print-on-demand coverage, and that operation handles covers and paper. "The POD system is working the way it should, which is filling inventory if there happen to be out of stocks in other parts of the supply chain," he said. He also said, more than once, that booksellers should order early.

Cartons in the office

Shelf Awareness asked stores last week and found some ordering more than at this point in past years.

Alsace Walentine of Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg, Fla., said: "We had already seen some unexpected delays in early fall and had heard from some of our publishers that reprints could easily take 4-6 weeks, if not longer, so we took advantage of many promotions from publishers (extra discount, delayed billing)." She added: "We've been ordering some must-have books in carton quantities and have created a fortress of boxes in our cramped office."

Hannah Harlow of the Bookshop of Beverly Farms in Beverly, Mass., told Shelf Awareness that some of this fall's reprints "take a really long time to come back into print." The delays are attributed to shortages at printers and long lines, which "seems legitimate and unfortunate," the report says. Her store is carrying "13% more inventory than I was a year ago at the same time." She described ordering big and early as "taking wild stabs in the dark," and said "I'm going to guess wrong in a few cases."

Walentine's request to publishers was this: "My plea to publishers is to give indie booksellers some information when bottlenecks are beginning so that we can take care of our customers. Bad news is manageable; no news is worse."

John Cavalier of Cavalier House Books, in Baton Rouge and Denham Springs, La., expects "a pretty good season" and says the store's "strategy is variety," so that "if we don't have X, we have Y and Z." John Evans of Camino Books in Del Mar, Calif., said that since the pandemic "shipping from the Big Five publishers has gotten slower" and "the incidents of damaged books have increased."